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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27979557">Turn and Show Me Your Teeth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/atreacherousoldwitch/pseuds/atreacherousoldwitch'>atreacherousoldwitch</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Alcohol Abuse, Alcohol as a Coping Mechanism, Depression, F/M, Found Family, Friendship, Full Moons, Gen, I've taken canon and run with it, Moody has a potty mouth, Moody is a grumpy sod, Poverty, References to Sex, Remus Lupin &amp; Alastor Moody platonic, Remus is in a bad place for a bit, Remus/Kingsley background, Rule 63, Slight Dumbledore Bashing, Swearing, alternative universe, always a girl Remus, and so does Remus, assault but not graphic, but he has a good heart, canon-ish up to POA, description of injury, everyone lives lol, happy ending (we only write happy endings here), not explicit, the focus is Remus/Moody friendship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:46:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>35,971</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27979557</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/atreacherousoldwitch/pseuds/atreacherousoldwitch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the immediate aftermath there are funerals. </p><p>She’s hungover for Peter’s. Absolutely wasted for Lily and James’. </p><p> </p><p>Remus wakes up on the 1st November 1981 to find all her friends gone. Once the dust settles, she is painfully alone, coping but not really living. A chance encounter suddenly means Alastor Moody is keeping his mad-eye on her, and she learns that sometimes friendship can be found in the most unlikely place. </p><p>Or: in the wake of tragedy, Moody can see that Remus Lupin is, above all else, a survivor. He can also see that this poor girl needs some goddamn help. And since there’s no one else, he takes it upon himself to see her right.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Remus Lupin &amp; Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody, Remus Lupin/Kingsley Shacklebolt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. I'm Not Drunk, Are You?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A/N - So this is probably the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever written lol. In case anyone is interested, a little explanation: I love Remus Lupin. I think his character is so interesting and there’s so much going on behind the scenes that we don’t see. I’ve read some fantastic fics that fill in the gaps between October 1981 - Prisoner of Azkaban, and I’ve always wanted to write my own. The only things I love more than Remus Lupin, are gender bending characters and unconventional friendships! So here it is, the fic I’ve been writing in my head for over a year now, the gender-bent Remus!Lives fic (everyone lives we only write happy endings here lol) </p><p>Just a note: whilst this does have a happy ending, it is defo more adult than the ‘Won’t you please come get your baby?’ series - there’s alcohol, (both casual drinking and what can probably be described as binge drinking/unhealthy dependence), a fair amount of swearing and references to sex (not explicit, but again mentioned as part of unhealthy coping mechanism). Remus is also very depressed at the beginning. Please keep safe. </p><p>Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>————</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And they want you to doubt every choice that you've known</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And they want to find the holes in the armour exposed</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And they come on, whispering, "If you'd just do this for me,"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And turn and show their teeth, just before they sink it in</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And better than described, and deeper the descent</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I never thought we'd have to learn to doubt our friends </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Black Betty &amp; the Moon’ by The Horrible Crowes</em>
</p><p> </p><p>————</p><p>In the immediate aftermath there are funerals. </p><p>Remus wears her mother’s dress, because her smart one is too short for her now and it’s worn through at the elbows. She has to dig through mildew ridden boxes in her parents’ empty house to find it, and McGonagall pins the neckline for her because it’s a bit big, but no one notices.</p><p>She’s hungover for Peter’s funeral. Absolutely wasted for Lily and James’.</p><p>There are endless condolences, painful and sincere. They ask if she wants to say something at the funerals but she doesn’t. Remus thinks if she even opens her mouth, she’s going to be sick.</p><p>She recognises Petunia Dursley and Augusta Longbottom, but they don’t know who she is, or the role she’s played in all this, so they leave her alone and she doesn’t engage them.</p><p>Once the dust settles, they all leave her alone.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus sits in her parents’ house. It’s December. It’s freezing. The walls are peeling, old and cracked. The rooms smell of damp. That un-lived, unloved smell, of a cottage left closed for years.</p><p>No one knows where she is.</p><p>No one cares.</p><p>Remus sits at the wobbly table, with uneven legs and stained counter top.</p><p>She carefully thinks of nothing, and sips hot water from her chipped mug as she watches the moon travel across the sky.</p><p>What happens now?</p><p><em>What happens now?</em> </p><p>————</p><p>James used to say that 3am was the arse of the night - because only shit happens from then on.</p><p>As Remus squats on the corner of Villiers street in London, retching into the gutter, she reluctantly agrees that he was probably right.</p><p>Technically it isn't 3am just yet - she has ten more minutes - but she’s been drinking since the early afternoon, and mixing too. She doesn’t quite have the strength or the co-ordination to get up so she stays where she is: half crouched, half slumped against the cold brick and waits for the heaving to stop.</p><p>The bile is disturbingly fluorescent, and she vaguely remembers some men buying her cheap cocktails, blue and green, and what on earth kind of alcohol makes it that colour? It looks horrendous and tastes like plastic, and oh <em>merlin</em> she’s in a right old state, and even worse there’s no one she can call to help.</p><p>It’s cold and wet, early February and she had a jacket but she doesn’t know where it is, she had a bag too but it’s long gone. Thankfully she still has her wand where it’s tucked in the side of her bra. She’ll have bruises later, along her rib cage, but at least she knows it’s safe, can feel it digging in each time she breathes.</p><p>It’s no good if she needs to get to it quickly though. If she’s attacked she won’t be able to draw it, but the war’s over now, apparently. Has been for four months. </p><p>(<em>Four months</em> <em>since Lily and James,</em> she thinks, with a pang of pain deep in her chest, so stark for a moment that Remus thinks she might be having a heart attack but, no, just her grief)</p><p>And anyway, even if she could draw her wand from her bra, there’s no way she can aim accurately or cast with any sort of power. She can barely lift her head.</p><p>There’s a group of jeering men exiting the club behind her, and she can hear them shouting and leering, wolf whistling. For a moment she entertains the idea of calling them over and seeing if one of them will take her home with them.</p><p>But, after thinking hard and trying to ignore the dizzy unstable feeling in her stomach, head resting on the brick wall, she thinks she’s not up for sex this evening, not with some random stranger even if it means she’ll have to sleep in her damp cold house instead. So with great effort she pulls herself up using the wall. She’s got bruises on her knees, and scrapes on her palms, and she leans back for a moment until things stop spinning.</p><p>She can’t apparate in this state, but there’s a public floo on Whitehall so she takes a deep breath and turns left towards Trafalgar Square, one slow step at a time.</p><p>Someone wolf whistles her so she throws a middle finger over her shoulder. She has to hang on to the wall to keep steady, nearly falls when she has to cross the road. She had a packet of cigarettes earlier but she hasn’t seen them for a while, thinks that they maybe were in her jacket.</p><p>For merlin’s sake.</p><p>Remus staggers across Trafalgar Square, nearly gets hit by a black cab that beeps at her, and she’s almost there, turns down towards Whitehall. She doesn’t have any money for the floo, but if she sheds a few tears the man on the door might let her go for free. He did the other week.</p><p>She stops to retch again, arm braced on the wall and manages to keep upright. She doesn’t have much left to throw up really, so she’s just dry heaving - which is absolutely <em>lovely -</em> when -</p><p>‘Lupin?’</p><p>The voice behind her makes her jump. She’s so stupid. If the war was still on she’d be <em>dead</em>; she hadn’t even heard anyone approach. She turns her head slightly, peers to the side and sees:</p><p>‘Alright Moody’ she croaks. She doesn’t even have the energy to be embarrassed by her sorry state.</p><p>‘Merlin Lupin’</p><p>A wobbly shove and she leans back against the wall facing him.</p><p>‘Merlin and Morgana, Moody, your eye, fuck’ she swears and has to look away lest she be sick again.</p><p>Half his face is missing, an open wound where his eye used to be, and most of his nose is gone too. The resulting effect is <em>horrendous.</em> Moody looks like a gargoyle or a walking corpse. He grins at this reaction.</p><p>She tips her head back against the wall, she’s exhausted. Moody watches her closely, and she can’t stand the scrutiny so she closes her eyes.</p><p>‘No, none of that Lupin’ he says lowly, and he approaches her slowly, she can hear his wooden leg thump unevenly on the concrete and a surprisingly gentle hand touches her arm. She opens her eyes, but it doesn’t really help because everything is blurry.</p><p>‘No lecture?’ she asks, snide, and Moody considers for a moment but shakes his head.</p><p>‘Where are you headed?’</p><p>‘Home.’</p><p>‘Where’s that?’</p><p>His hand grasps her arm harder, a counter balance to the way that she’s slowly tilting over, and tugs her upright again. Or what she assumes is upright. It’s hard to tell.</p><p>‘Where’s that Lupin?’ he says, shaking her gently.</p><p>‘Were’s what?’</p><p>‘Merlin’ he swears under his breath, and Remus finds the thread of the conversation again.</p><p>‘Wales, on the coast. There’s - There’s a floo’ and she gestures vaguely to her right, towards where the public floo is, and Moody hums.</p><p>‘Come on then,’ and he pulls her forward until she’s standing, and when it becomes obvious that her legs won’t support her, he pulls her arm over his own shoulder and loops an arm hesitantly around her waist.</p><p>He’s sturdy and warm, and he’s not groping her or squeezing her like every other man that’s helped her home recently. It’s the most kindness anyone has shown her in months and she gets a bit teary. She blinks hard to hide it, if he says something she’s going to blame the alcohol, but he doesn’t.</p><p>When they get to the floo port they ask to see her wand, and Moody frowns when she has to stop and wiggle it out of her bra. She tries to wave Moody away but he won’t go. When she finally confesses that she hasn’t got any money, she expects him to loose his temper but he doesn’t.</p><p>He assess her slowly, as she stumbles and shifts from side to side and she can’t even begin to imagine what he’s thinking. He nods, and says to the man on the floo door, ‘thanks mate’, and pulls her against him again. They head back outside.</p><p>‘Wait what?’ Remus mutters, confused.</p><p>‘You’re coming home with me.’</p><p>‘Why?’</p><p>‘Why? Because if you go home alone and choke on your own sick I’ll feel guilty.’</p><p>‘I wouldn’t do that.’</p><p>‘I’m not sure you’d be aware enough to stop it.’</p><p>‘I would. Wait -‘</p><p>She realises a moment before it happens, that he’s going to apparate, and <em>oh my god I’m going to be sick</em>. The next minute they’re stood in his front garden, and she’s throwing up into his flower bed.</p><p>‘Sorry, I’m sorry’ and humiliation burns heavy on the back of her neck.</p><p>‘Forget about it’ he says softly, and he half carriers her inside.</p><p>She’s never been to his house before, it’s more quaint and tidy than she expected. A neat little cottage. She’d always imaged a castle with a moat and a draw bridge. Or something.</p><p>Inside is just as tidy as the outside, and he settles her at the kitchen table and put the kettle on.</p><p>She tilts forward and slumps onto the table, forehead resting, and closes her eyes. Listens to the sounds of Moody bustling around her, fixing a cup of tea.</p><p>He clears his throat, an indicator that the tea is ready, and Remus manages to sit upright.</p><p>‘Do you want something to eat?’ He asks, and she shakes her head.</p><p>‘Do-‘ he starts, Remus can’t take questions, doesn’t want to explain herself so she interrupts:</p><p>‘You’ve got rats.’ She says, and points to a gap between his cupboards, at the bottom it looks like it’s been chewed.</p><p>‘Too small for rats.’</p><p>‘You’d be surprised. With mice, if you can fit a pencil in a hole, a mouse can get through it. You don’t have many though - I can - I can’t - I’d be able to smell them.’</p><p>Silence, and then thinking of rats makes her think of other things and she swallows down the lump in her throat because <em>Peter</em> - Peter is dead and James is dead and Lily is dead, Marlene and Dorcus too and Alice and Frank are worse than dead and she’s here alive and how is that fair?</p><p>But Sirius is still alive too. That’s not fair either.</p><p>‘It’s an old house’ Moody says, ‘not surprised if there were mice in the walls. With my new eye I’ll be able to see them.’ And then he spends the next twenty minutes explaining the eye he’s had custom made, and excited is never a word she’s used to describe Moody, but she’s starting to think the loss of half his face isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, if it means he’ll be able to see out the back of his head.</p><p>She doesn’t realise she’s drifting off until Moody’s hand re-appears on her arm and he helps her stand. She thinks he’s going to dump her on the sofa, but it turns out he has a spare room, so he all but tucks her in and with a brief pause to find her a bin just in case, he leaves her to it.</p><p>She does sleep, fitfully, and when she wakes around ten feeling like something has died in her mouth, the house is quiet. She doesn’t touch anything, and sneaks out apparating away.</p><p>————</p><p>To his embarrassment, Lupin manages to sneak out of his cottage the following morning before Moody has a chance to speak to her.</p><p>Contrary to popular belief he <em>does</em> sleep, and he’d pulled a double shift before bumping into Lupin by Trafalgar Square. So he’s slept until gone eleven, and when he wakes Lupin is no where to be found.</p><p>The wards say she left an hour before, and the only evidence that she was even here is two dirty tea cups on the side, and the bile on his chrysanthemums. It’s easily vanished.</p><p>Moody fixes himself breakfast. Sits and thinks.</p><p>On one hand, what’s it to him if some poor girl wants to get wasted on a Monday night? She’s grieving, she’s suffering, and she wants to cope by drinking and forgetting. That’s only natural. He’d do the same. He <em>has</em> done the same, when he was a younger man and the pain of loss was sharper than it is now.</p><p>But on the other hand, it’s Lupin. She’s barely more than a child. And at twenty-one she’s been let down, again and again by the people who should have trusted her - and his own doubt in her churns in his gut and he feels a hot wave of guilt. At one point they had been certain Lupin was spilling secrets, and three people died for that mistake.</p><p>The three people Lupin loved most in the world.</p><p>The more he thinks on it, as he tidies away the dishes, and heads to the shower, the more he realises that Lupin is alone.</p><p>She has no friends left - most of her cohort are dead or married. Her boyfriend (if rumours were to be believed) is now serving a life sentence in Azkaban. Her parents, he knows, are already gone. Those trustworthy authority figures - Dumbledore, McGonagall, he knows the charms master had a soft spot for her - doubted her too. When asked to pick who they thought was spying, they’d picked the only werewolf in the order, and they claim to have no biases but there it is clear as day.</p><p>And she’s a werewolf. That has associations all of its own. She’s not going to have stable job; she’s going to struggle to have any kind of career. Nothing there that she could throw herself into to cope.</p><p>Not to mention the injury of the full moons. Moody has seen older, stronger men than her let their disease take them, or worse, end things by their own hand. Even the strong ones succumb eventually to their injuries.</p><p>Resulting in, Moody can see it clearly now, a young girl who’s going to be dead before the year is out.</p><p>He dresses for work later that afternoon, peers at himself in the mirror in the bathroom. He admires the wound in his face, and scowls, drawing his eyebrows down and the resulting effect is, he thinks, pretty intimidating. <em>Nice</em>.</p><p>He brushes his hair carefully, and pulls out a tie and puts it on even though he thinks ties are worse than the cruciatus, because Amelia Bones is a stickler for that kind of thing. But, when she took over from Barty Crouch, she immediately revoked authorisation for aurors to use unforgivables, so that’s put her in Moody’s good book.</p><p>Moody sighs. He can’t think of a single person he could ask to check in on Lupin. There are a few people who think fondly of her, but he can’t imagine she’ll accept a visit from them. No one close to her that he can ask.</p><p>This kid is on a downward spiral, and there’s no one to help her.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus goes back to Haven, the club on Villers street, three times the following week. She spots Moody leaving work after his night shift only once. She’s too embarrassed to speak to him, so she hides in a small alcove and is grateful that he doesn’t have his new eye yet so can’t see her. A man with a leather jacket and bleach dyed hair is eyeing her with interest so she kisses him and lets him take her home.</p><p>What a state she’s in.</p><p>James would be ashamed.</p><p>————</p><p>It takes a long time before Moody sees Lupin again. When six months pass with no sign of her, he worries that it’s already too late and she’s dead in a ditch somewhere.</p><p>Moody has no idea where she lives outside of ‘Wales on the coast’, and, for obvious reasons, he assumes she’s avoiding wizarding society. He keeps an eye out, it’s easier once he gets his new one, but he doesn’t see her.</p><p>He puts an alert on her name with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, for him to be notified if she crops up. He’s wary of the werewolf containment facilities in the ministry. He knows she doesn’t use them regularly, but if she does, odds are she’ll need medical assistance and he’d like to know. They’re notoriously brutal.</p><p>And that’s all he can do, for now.</p><p>Sometimes he forgets. Between Death Eater trials and raids, between his 85 hour working week, and his responsibilities in training new recruits, he forgets that somewhere Remus Lupin is all alone. Thinks, <em>she’s not his responsibility.</em></p><p>And then he captures another Death Eater, or attends that ridiculous trial and lays eyes on the Lestranges and Barty Crouch Jr, who tortured the Longbottoms to insanity, (and he’s been subject to the cruciatus curse, he can’t imagine how long it would take for the mind to shut down like that) and he remembers that he thought Remus Lupin was one of them.</p><p>That Dumbledore and McGonagall and all the others who knew her best, thought her a heartless monster who, at best, was complicit in the murder and torture of children, and at worst -</p><p>At worst that she was the kind of werewolf that infects others, feral and wild.</p><p>And they were wrong.</p><p>They were wrong and three people died for it. Plus twelve muggles, he thinks belatedly. Twelve muggles died too.</p><p>It feels like penance, to assure himself that next time he sees her, he’ll -</p><p>He’ll do something.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus bumps into Moody in the main concourse of the ministry almost a year after she saw him last. She’s in a better state physically at least - she’s sober this time - and she’s queueing to get her wand back from where she handed it in an hour ago.</p><p>Werewolves are not allowed wands in the Ministry of Magic.</p><p>She spots him first and nods at him, and though she doesn’t call him over he makes his way regardless.</p><p>‘Lupin’</p><p>‘Hi Moody, looking good’ she inclines her head meaning the huge eye that takes over the side of his face. It’s oddly coloured and spins independently of the other eye which is disconcerting.</p><p>‘Cheers,’ he says with a grin, and the eye spins around 360 degrees and Remus makes a face, ‘what are you doing here?’</p><p>‘Annual assessment,’ she says.</p><p>‘Fancy a drink after?’</p><p>It takes a moment, because Remus is a bit startled, but she has no other plans. ‘Sure.’</p><p>He nods again, and says ‘come find me when you’re done here, I’ll wait by the doors,’ and he doesn’t wait for a reply before he stomps off.</p><p>Strange man.</p><p>But no stranger than the company she keeps nowadays. Always good to have an auror onside, or if not onside then at least one who might be vaguely sympathetic to whatever plight she finds herself in.</p><p>She finds him 25 minutes later, sat on the main stairs on Whitehall. She’s fuming because the witch on the desk had tried to give Remus someone else’s wand, and it had taken a good 15 minutes before she’d even admitted the mistake - never mind the fact that the wand in question had bitten Remus quite badly.</p><p>She pushes the scowl away and says ‘sorry’ to Moody, but he shrugs her off and says ‘the Pig’s Head or the Dragon?’</p><p>‘Let’s go to the Dragon. There’s a bar tender at the Pig’s that I’d rather not bump into, to be honest.’</p><p>Moody snorts, and turns left obligingly and they amble up the road.</p><p>‘How are you keeping?’ He says, and Remus shrugs.</p><p>‘Fine, mostly.’</p><p>‘You working?’</p><p>‘Free lance stuff, mostly muggle work for obvious reasons.’</p><p>‘Hmm. Damn shame.’</p><p>‘Well, it is what it is I suppose.’</p><p>They get to the Dancing Dragon, a dingy little pub, with low ceilings and dark wooden beams. Remus pulls out her purse but Moody snaps:</p><p>‘Put that away. I’ll get it. Whaddaya want?’</p><p>‘Are you sure?’ And at his nod, ‘Whatever you’re having, thanks.’</p><p>He returns a few minutes later with two pints, and Remus drinks gratefully.</p><p>They lapse into silence, and it’s a bit awkward. They’ve never had a drink like this, have never socialised as such. The only conversations they’ve had were order business, quick and sharp, and then the horribly embarrassing night she barely remembers when she threw up in his flower beds.</p><p>She wonders if he pities her.</p><p>He’s watching her closely over rim of his beer. Remus racks her brain for any safe topic for small talk, when Moody pipes up:</p><p>‘You hear from any of the old crowd nowadays?’</p><p>‘No, not really.’ A pause, ‘who’s going to contact me?’</p><p>Moody considers this for a moment. ‘Weasleys? You and Molly seemed to get on.’</p><p>‘She has seven kids to look after, she’s got better things to do then reach out to me.’</p><p>‘Dumbledore?’</p><p>And it’s said with a sort of casual shrug, as if this has just occurred to him, that it’s a total coincidence he happens to mention the name of the man Remus has been avoiding for two years.</p><p>And suddenly it all clicks together.</p><p>‘Oh,’ she says slowly, ‘I understand now. Did he send you? Did he ask you to check up on me?’</p><p>‘No.’ Moody says firmly, and he doesn’t have any tells - he’s too good for that - but he does look sort of shifty, and she feels irritation build in her, but she’s not sure why.</p><p>‘Don’t lie,’ she says harshly, ‘what does Dumbledore want?’</p><p>‘I’m not here on behalf of Dumbledore.’ Moody purses his lips, and then sighs.</p><p>‘He wants to know where I am.’</p><p>‘No.’ Something flickers on Moody’s face, and then he says 'he cares, Lupin. He wants to make sure you’re alright, but you won’t answer his owls.’</p><p>‘You mean he feels guilty.’</p><p>‘Why would he feel guilty?’</p><p>‘Because -‘ she snaps, ‘because he thought I was the spy, and if he hadn’t doubted me he might have caught the actual spy and Lily and James wouldn’t be dead.’</p><p>‘Is that what Dumbledore thinks? Or is that what you think he should think?’</p><p>‘What’s that supposed-‘</p><p>‘I mean that you blame him for that, and you think he should feel guilty.’</p><p>‘Of course I blame him! He wasted time and effort thinking I was the spy. And I never, never gave him any cause to think it was me. I did everything that was asked of me, and in the end it didn’t matter. I bet you thought it was me as well.’</p><p>Moody had opened his mouth to speak, but stops at that last statement. He doesn’t say anything but his face twists and she can see it’s true. It feels like a punch in the gut. Of course he thought it was her. Everyone did.</p><p>‘We knew it was someone close to the Potters.’</p><p>‘And it had to be me.’</p><p>He doesn’t have anything to say to that.</p><p>Remus puts her hands flat on the table, and leans forward.</p><p>‘I have only ever done <em>exactly</em> what was asked of me. I didn’t tell a soul about the work that I was doing because <em>Dumbledore told me not to</em>. I have followed every rule and every instruction but Lily and James died because you couldn’t trust a werewolf.’</p><p>‘I’m sorry Remus’</p><p>But she barely hears it. She snatches her coat from the back of the chair and storms out leaving him there. He doesn’t follow.</p><p>She hadn’t known that Moody had doubted her too.</p><p>She’d respected him, in the height of the war. Thought him capable and trustworthy. He obviously hadn’t thought the same of her and it stings.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody finishes the rest of his pint, and the one Lupin left behind.</p><p><em>Well</em>, he thinks, <em>you cocked that one up didn’t you?</em></p><p>————</p><p>The next full moon Remus ends up in hospital because she rips a hole in her belly, and wakes up to blood pooling around her.</p><p>She spends two days in St Mungo’s. Alone.</p><p>Before she leaves she goes, tentatively, to visit Alice and Frank.</p><p>The hospital ward is white, overwhelmingly white, clinical walls and reflective floors. Alice sits by the window, but she’s not looking out. She’s not looking at anything.</p><p>Remus brushes her hair for her, and braids it. Talks meaningless comfort, the latest from the gossip rags.</p><p>When Remus leaves, she pauses and rests her hand on Frank’s shoulder.</p><p>Frank had been head boy. He was an auror. He’d been handsome and powerful, charming. Cheeky. Chivalrous. They’d all looked up to him.</p><p>Now there was nothing left.</p><p>————</p><p>Nine months later, a nervous woman with mousey hair wonders up to the auror department to find him.</p><p>It’s early, not even six o’clock in the morning, and Moody has just settled himself down with an obscenely large cup of tea, and his mountain of files to read before the nine am briefing. He idly watches through the wall, as a woman tip toes down the corridor, peering into empty offices, and eventually she pokes her head around his shared office and taps her knuckles on the door frame.</p><p>‘Alastor Moody?’ she asks, and when he fixes both eyes on her she shrinks back slightly, but meets his gaze with her watery eyes. She’s familiar.</p><p>‘Aye’ he says.</p><p>‘I work in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures,’ and that makes Moody frown, because that’s where he recognises her from, she helped him put an alert on Lupin’s name.</p><p>A heavy feeling sinks in his chest. This is not going to be good.</p><p>‘My understanding is that you wanted updates on the werewolf known as -‘ she pauses and glances down at the parchment clutched in her hands, ‘-Remus Lupin?’</p><p>‘Aye’ he says slowly.</p><p>‘Well, she - she’s been using the ministry containment cells for the last -‘ another check of the parchment ‘- six months, but she failed to attend last night, and failed to provide alternative accommodation to the department. I thought you might want to know.’</p><p>Moody can feel the pressure building in his skull. It’s the first he’s heard of Lupin using ministry containment cells for full moons.</p><p>‘Why wasn’t I informed about her attendance in ministry facilities?’</p><p>The woman glances down at her parchment, but the answer isn’t written there.</p><p>‘I don’t know sir.’</p><p>‘What are the consequences for failing to provide alternative accommodation to the department?’</p><p>‘A fine, most likely.’</p><p>‘Send it to me, I’ll pay it.’</p><p>The woman frowns, and hesitates.</p><p>‘Send it to me,’ Moody barks, ‘in fact, send all future fines to me. I’ll be down later to check that’s noted in her file.’</p><p>The woman nods, hastily, and flees. Moody watches as she hurries back down the corridor, and then he heaves himself to his feet. Thinks for second, chugs his tea, packs away his files and strides into Amelia’s office.</p><p>She looks up when he fails to knock, but the stern pinched look on her face is normal. Or, if not normal, it’s the one she usually wears around him.</p><p>‘Need the day off,’ he grunts. ‘Emergency.’</p><p>‘What kind of emergency?’</p><p>Moody just shrugs, ‘the urgent kind.’</p><p>Amelia watches him for a moment more, and he makes sure to keep both eyes on her, because she hates it when his roving eye wonders when she’s talking to him. She takes it as a sign he’s not listening (and often she’s right.)</p><p>‘Fine,’ and she turns back to her paperwork. ‘Let Proudfoot and McGarold know.’</p><p>‘I need tomorrow too.’</p><p>Amelia slams down her quill, and looks back at him.</p><p>‘Why?’ she snaps.</p><p>‘Emergency.’</p><p>Amelia purses her lips, her face tight and frustrated. Moody focuses on keeping a straight face. If he laughs she’s going to say no.</p><p>‘Fine. Get out of my sight.’</p><p>‘Cheers Amelia,’ and he strides back out.</p><p>She’s alright really.</p><p>He leaves a note for Proudfoot, and one for Shacklebolt too, because they’re supposed to be going over some cold cases today.</p><p>It takes another five minutes for him to brainstorm places Lupin might go and then he’s off.</p><p>He finds her on his second guess.</p><p>————</p><p>Awareness comes slowly.</p><p>Being a werewolf is extremely undignified, Remus thinks, not for the first time. Painful, <em>obviously</em>, horrendous, chronic, and debilitating, but really the loss of dignity is biggest issue.</p><p>She’s sprawled on the floor of the shrieking shack, naked and bleeding, and she has nothing in her to move. To get up. To drag the duvet from the half broken bed and cover herself up.</p><p>Nothing.</p><p>She dozes off.</p><p>————</p><p>The trap door slides open with hard thud and it startles Remus from the half sleep she’s been lying in. She can’t spare the energy to tilt her head and see who’s joined her, but the muffled curse as whoever it is pulls themselves up through the door is familiar.</p><p>‘Fuck Lupin’ Moody mutters once he’s through, and Remus belatedly realises she’s still naked and her limbs are not exactly strategically placed. </p><p>Moody’s false leg thumps unevenly on the rotten floorboards, and he kneels down next to her awkwardly, running his wand up and down. He’s brought a bag, and he digs around inside it, pulls out essence of murtlap, and when he gently dabs it on her bleeding thigh Remus twitches half heartedly, and Moody snorts.</p><p>‘You’re alright Lupin’ he says gently, pitched low and slow, ‘it’s nothing I’ve not seen before, and between you and me, blood doesn’t really do if for me.’</p><p>Remus does laugh at that, a huff that hurts her ribs, and when she opens her eyes squinting, Moody looks mighty pleased with himself.</p><p>He tucks a clean blanket around her, and sighs.</p><p>‘Come on Lupin,’ he says needlessly, and he heaves himself up and before she can say anything, he’s scooped her up too, and the squeeze of disapparition makes her head throb and sends her swirling back into unconsciousness.</p><p>————</p><p>The problem is, Remus thinks, when she wakes confused for the third time, and recognises vaguely the ceiling of Moody’s spare room, is that the human body is not made for this shit.</p><p>She’s been a werewolf for almost twenty years now. Well. Eighteen years. Give or take.</p><p>There’s only so much the human body can take. That her body can take, and she’s quickly reaching that point. She’s twenty three now. The reality is, she’s unlikely to see thirty.</p><p>Sometimes she thinks it might be a relief.</p><p>The door creaks open, and Moody pokes his head around the door frame in what she assumes is courtesy <em>as he can see through it</em>, but she lifts her fingers and wiggles them in a wave.</p><p>He sits on the edge of the bed, and hands her cup. Embarrassingly, he has to help her drink, but she feels soothing cold seep into her bones, and she can sit up and take the cup of tea Moody offers.</p><p>He retreats back to the chair in the corner, both eyes fixed on her closely.</p><p>‘Moody-‘</p><p>‘I’m sorry,’ he interrupts, blunt, and Remus has to blink.</p><p>‘What?’</p><p>‘We knew someone close to the Potters was selling secrets. And we knew that James Potter had three friends he trusted with his life. Odds were, one of them was selling him out. And instead of using my brain and my own eyes, I followed the thinking of others, and it cost Lily and James their lives. It’s not that I distrusted you. It’s not that I actively thought you were the spy. It’s that I thought Pettigrew was too stupid, and Black too loyal. You were the only one I thought could pull it off.’</p><p>‘Right.’</p><p>‘I was wrong. Forget the others, and forget Dumbledore. I was wrong. I’m sorry Lupin.’</p><p>No one has apologised to her like this before. Not Dumbledore, not McGonagall, not all the others in the order who doubted her. No one has looked her in the eye, and taken responsibility for their actions. Apologised for doubting her.</p><p>‘You were right,’ he continues, ‘what you said to me last November. You’ve only ever done what was asked of you. I know that now.’</p><p>He stops. Evidently he’s said his piece, and now it’s up to her whether she forgives him or not.</p><p>It’s refreshing.</p><p>He’s not begging, not guilting her. He’s sorry and he’s explained himself.</p><p>And he’s rescued her from the shack and patched her up, and his cottage is warm and cozy, not like her cold empty house.</p><p>She takes a sip of tea.</p><p>‘Thank you,’ Remus sighs, ‘just - it’s ok. You weren’t the only one, and I was the logical choice. And, let’s be honest, there’s motive right? Because under him werewolves were promised more. And if I thought those promises were genuine, I might have been tempted. But I’m not that stupid.’</p><p>Moody’s nodding.</p><p>‘I know Lupin. You’re not stupid at all.’</p><p>‘How did you find me? In the shack.’</p><p>Moody gives her an appraising look, and sighs, ‘I’ve been stalking you, near enough.’</p><p>Remus snorts into her tea.</p><p>‘You what?’</p><p>Moody’s face is grim, and she assumes that he’s bracing himself for her reaction. That he’s telling her the truth even though he doesn’t want to.</p><p>‘You’ve been coming to the ministry holding cells for the last couple months. I put an alert on your name, for emergencies and such. When you didn’t show this month I - I was worried, so I tracked down the places you’re known to use. This was my second guess.’</p><p>‘Making sure I was contained.’</p><p>‘Making sure you were alright,’ he corrects, and -</p><p>Well.</p><p>That’s nice of him isn’t it? He didn’t have to do that.</p><p>And it’s been a long time - years - since someone looked out for her off their own back.</p><p>And, most importantly, it doesn’t feel like pity.</p><p>It doesn’t really feel like anything, except that Moody could see she needed a hand and has offered one, no strings attached. He doesn’t really care for her, Remus realises, he just wants to keep her alive, probably for Dumbledore, and that should be upsetting but it’s oddly freeing.</p><p>He doesn’t really care what she does. He can’t be let down by her. He’s just here.</p><p>Huh.</p><p>Well, the man kept her from bleeding out on the floor of the shack. The least she could do is say thank you.</p><p>So she does.</p><p>————</p><p>Lupin, Moody realises quickly, now he’s got a solid amount of time to watch and interact with her, doesn’t like platitudes or half truths. She’d rather have the whole truth, painful as it may be.</p><p>By being honest, and telling her he’s been keeping an eye on her for the last six months, he’s inadvertently gained her - not quite trust, but he’s lost her distrust. He guesses that not many people have been honest with her in her lifetime.</p><p>She stays in his spare room for the rest of the day, and most of the next one, before she heaves herself up and disappears back to wherever she lives nowadays.</p><p>Before she goes, he asks her for a drink the following week.</p><p>‘Do you fancy me Moody?’ she asks leaning on the door frame, ‘because if you do, I really don’t need to be wined and dined. I’ll put out, don’t worry about that’</p><p>‘Of course not you silly girl,’ Moody shouts over his shoulder, already heading back inside. ‘Believe it or not I like an intelligent conversation every now and then.’</p><p>He’s not sure who’s more surprised the following Friday when she does turn up for a pint. He buys her dinner because she looks hungry, and the statistics around werewolf poverty flash in front of his eyes for a second, but then Lupin flutters her eyelashes at the waiter, and he spills a pint of beer down his front and Moody forgets about it for a second laughing.</p><p>The girl's a menace, he realises.</p><p>An absolute menace.</p><p>————</p><p>He heads down to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures a couple of days later to check her file, but they can’t find it.</p><p>‘What do you mean you can’t find it?’ he snaps, ‘where is it?’</p><p>The staff are harried, and he recognises the woman who came to find him two weeks previous, flipping through the cabinet.</p><p>He doesn’t have her registration number, but he repeats ‘Remus Lupin,’ and they can’t find it anywhere.</p><p>Moody leaves abruptly, barking ‘forget about it,’ and stomps off. He wonders whether there’s a reason her file is missing. Maybe that’s why they failed to notify him. Her father worked for the ministry at one point, Moody remembers - maybe he paid someone off to remove her file from the cabinet. Life is easier if you’re not on the ministry’s books.</p><p>No fine ever appears either, for failing to register an alternative address. That makes Moody wonder as well.</p><p>He means to ask her about it, in their now regular drinks, but he changes his mind. He knows when to leave well enough alone.</p><p>————</p><p>It becomes a regular thing. Once a month, roughly, depending on Moody’s shift pattern.</p><p>Dinner and a drink.</p><p>At first it’s awkward. They don’t have much to say to each other, not many safe topics to discuss, and more than once they leave on bad terms having annoyed or frustrated each other.</p><p>She asks him ‘why the fuck are you bothering with me Moody? I’ve had enough of being someone’s pet werewolf.’</p><p>And he just shrugs.</p><p>A month later Remus accuses him of spying on her for Dumbledore, keeping tabs. Moody looses his temper at that. Shouts ‘You’re so fucking lonely Lupin, I thought you could do with some company,’ as she storms away. </p><p>As the weather turns cold, they settle.</p><p>————</p><p>Christmas is difficult that year. It’s been two years since Lily and James, and the world has moved on but Remus hasn’t and she’s not sure what to do with that fact.</p><p>Remus doesn’t have any family left, other than the odd distant cousin, so there’s no one to share the day with. </p><p>She spends the meagre pay check she’d received from her last waitressing job on a bottle of whiskey, and wraps herself in a blanket (thin and worn, but she’s fairly certain that it’s the one her mother used to keep on her bed, so Remus has never thrown it out). Curls up in the dingy bed in her childhood room, and drinks.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody doesn’t know what he’s doing.</p><p>He’s apparated to the Welsh coast, and he stands on the edge of the little town he’s fairly certain that houses the Lupins' old home.</p><p>It’s bleak. And that’s being polite.</p><p>With the December wind, and the veneer of grey that hangs over these industrial towns, it’s dingy and polluted, and desolate.</p><p>The heavy weight of unemployment hangs over the town as well, as he limps through streets. Shops boarded up, buildings cracked and neglected.</p><p><em>Merlin</em>.</p><p>Moody peers through the houses, and tries to feel less like a peeping-tom, when he spies families settling in for dinner. It’s easy to find the Lupin house, in the end. It’s the last one on the row, slightly separated from all the others.</p><p>He can feel the magic hanging around the house, and he’s glad to see that Lupin has kept up her wards and defences on the house. He’s less glad when he spots Lupin curled up in bed with what appears to be a bottle of whisky.</p><p>What is he doing here?</p><p>He hesitates at the gate.</p><p>————</p><p>To say Remus is surprised when her door bell goes, is an understatement.</p><p>She’s made it through a significant chunk of the bottle, and is starting to feel the fuzzy lightheadedness that comes from drinking, when it rings.</p><p>Remus ignores it.</p><p>It goes again. Again.</p><p>It’s only when someone starts thumping on the door with their fist, that Remus heaves herself up, nearly falls flat on her face as she tries to navigate the stairs, and when she cracks open the door it’s -</p><p>It’s Moody.</p><p>She opens the door wider. No point trying to hide her sorry state, nor the threadbare blanket draped around her shoulders. He’s probably been watching since he rang the bell for the first time.</p><p>'What are you doing here?’ she says, soft.</p><p>For a moment they meet eyes, both of Moody’s on hers, and she can see in his face that even he doesn’t really know.</p><p>‘Merry Christmas,’ he grunts.</p><p>Remus laughs. It's not unkind, but a tired sort of huff of breath.</p><p>‘Why are you here Moody?’</p><p>‘Come and have dinner with me. I’m buying.’</p><p>‘I don’t want dinner. I don’t want anything.’</p><p>‘So you’re what? You’re going to just - just get drunk?’</p><p>‘Yes.’</p><p>Remus turns, and wonders back into the house. She leaves the door open, and Moody takes the invitation. He shuts the door behind him, and joins her in the kitchen. He’s kept his coat on, and Remus doesn’t blame him. It’s freezing in here.</p><p>He sits down.</p><p>‘Get lost Moody,’ Remus says, ‘just go. I don’t know why you’re here.’</p><p>Remus can feel the heavy burning behind her eyes, and there’s no way to stop the tears, she attributes it to the alcohol, and when she closes her eyes they drip down her cheeks.</p><p>She can’t open her eyes. Can’t bear to see the look on Moody’s face.</p><p>She feels sick. She feels tired, and worn, stretched as thin as the blanket, and soon there’s going to be holes in her that can’t be stitched up, if there aren’t already. She puts her head in her hands, elbows on the table and just breathes.</p><p>They sit in silence for a long time.</p><p>Eventually, Moody speaks.</p><p>‘I don’t pretend to know what you’re feeling,’ he starts, voice as soft and slow as she’s ever heard it. ‘But I know grief. I was married, once. I had a family, once. And now it’s Christmas day, and I’m sitting here with you, and no one is missing me either. I know - I know. But the world still turns and the sun will come up tomorrow. And I think you should come and have dinner with me.’</p><p>When Remus musters her Gryffindor courage from where it's been sleeping, and peers between her fingers at Moody, his face is soft and open. He’s not even looking at her, he’s watching the birds out the window. But there’s no pity. Just sadness.</p><p>‘Okay,’ Remus whispers, and Moody turns his head.</p><p>He gives her a a crooked grin.</p><p>————</p><p>They do get dinner, and Lupin is quiet and withdrawn. But she’s there. And she’s alive.</p><p>So he insists that she has coffee and tea and no more alcohol, and he watches her eat and insists again that she has seconds.</p><p>They sit after dinner, on Moody’s sofa both nursing teas. He pretends not to see Lupin’s tears, that overflow down her cheeks, and he sort of wishes he could reach over and wipe them away but instead he just sits with her in silence.</p><p>————</p><p>Something changes between them then, and as the winter turns to spring, Lupin starts to thaw.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus can’t, for the life of her, figure out what Moody’s angle is.</p><p>It's like a sore tooth, she can help but poke at, relentlessly. But the hours of her waitressing job are long and boring, and in between pouring cups of tea, and cutting cake that she can’t afford for tiny little girls with bows in their hair, she thinks of Moody.</p><p>And she just can’t figure it out. She doesn’t understand what he has to gain from this, so in the end she has to accept that there isn't anything to gain. And that’s just as, if not more, disturbing.</p><p>But then after she looses her job in the tea rooms, and is forced to trek around London, looking for something, anything else, when she joins Moody for their now regular drink he’s -</p><p>He’s sympathetic but not condescending. He pays for her drink but it carries no expectation. He bitches about his work, slags off Amelia Bones who, apparently, can’t tell her arm from her arse … or something to that effect. Remus is sniggering too loudly to hear Moody’s elaborate turn of phrase, and it’s distracting enough that she doesn’t think of her impending poverty for almost an hour.</p><p>‘You have such a way with words,’ Remus laughs, as Moody spears another chip with his fork.</p><p>‘Aye, I bloody do don’t I?’</p><p>‘Such poetry.’</p><p>Moody waves the chip at her.</p><p>‘Don’t take the piss,’ he grunts, but Remus can see from the way he swallows down his smile that he’s having a good time. That they’re joking together, hanging out as if they’re friends.</p><p>Moody drops her home later that evening, he insists, and he claps her on the shoulder when they say goodbye, and Remus feels something almost fond in her chest.</p><p>Almost.</p><p>He’s still a snarky bastard, she thinks.</p><p>————</p><p>They settle.</p><p>The monthly drinks are the cornerstone. They meet, in any pub in London, Manchester, Glasgow, it doesn’t matter which.</p><p>Remus bitches about whatever dead-end job she’s working this month, and Moody complains about his co-workers and the stupidity of aurors. They dissect the prophet’s gossip stories and Remus mulls over Moody’s cold cases.</p><p>Time passes.</p><p>They’re a year in now. A year in to this strange relationship.</p><p>(Almost four years since Lily and James, Remus thinks, the internal counter checking up days and hours, almost without her conscious thought. It’s like it’s ingrained in her now, the same way she thinks ‘I’ve been a werewolf for twenty years, 238 full moons’, she thinks ‘Lily and James have been dead for three years, 6 months’. <em>And Peter.</em> Peter’s been dead for three years too, and inevitably there’s a pang of guilt that he’s an after thought, even in his death.)</p><p>A year in dinner and a drink slowly changes into Moody patching her up after rough full moon, and when Remus lets herself into his cottage when she knows he’s at work, just to help herself to his tea collection, and she knows for certain he won’t mind she has to concede that maybe they are friends.</p><p>She leaves him a note to let him know it was her, because trust or no, Moody gets paranoid about people being in his space. She writes:</p><p>‘your favourite werewolf needed some tea, ta very much.</p><p>See you Tuesday</p><p>R x’</p><p>When she visits him a couple of weeks later, she can see he’s stuck it on his fridge.</p><p>————</p><p>Dumbledore catches them eventually.</p><p>It’s late August and Remus thinks that Moody’s birthday is around now, even though he won’t tell her the exact date. They’ve forgone their usual haunts and gone to a proper beer garden in Edinburgh. They’re sat outside, gossiping about new recruits in Moody’s office. To Remus’ delight, Moody is scathing with his terms of phrase, both of them a little bit tipsy and sniggering into their pints about the stupid questions Moody had been asked in the induction, when Moody’s eye spins around peering out of the back of his head. And he doesn’t spill his pint, his reflexes are too good for that, but it’s a close thing and he mutters ‘oh merlin’s beard’, and when Remus peers past him she can see most of the Hogwarts faculty coming into the garden.</p><p>It means she can see Dumbledore’s face when he spots them, and the genuine surprise, the way his eyebrows leap up to his forehead, makes Remus cackle and Moody’s face is serene but his shoulders are jumping up and down.</p><p>They exchange pleasantries with the staff, but decline to join them, and when they leave Remus mutters to Moody ‘he’s going to ask you about me now.’</p><p>Moody says from behind her, half muttered so she’s not even sure she’s supposed to hear, ‘he can ask, but I won’t tell him shit.’</p><p>And Remus is drunk enough that this is the funniest thing she’s ever heard, and then Moody complains he’s hungry so they go and get dinner.</p><p>————</p><p>Lupin is right. Dumbledore does ask Moody about her. And Moody keeps his promise and keeps his mouth shut.</p><p>She’s not yours, he thinks, and he almost wants Dumbledore to hear it. She’s not your pet, she’s more than that.</p><p>————</p><p>The biggest surprise for Moody throughout this whole thing, is the realisation that he <em>actually likes Lupin</em>.</p><p>He resolutely meets her, every month, for a drink. Most of the time dinner too, because looking at her collar bones and her wrists makes him feel things, and then the way she devours a whole chicken curry and chips makes him feel better. Aids his guilt about the whole situation.</p><p>And then, about six months in Lupin obviously decides he can be trusted, or she just doesn’t care anymore, or, hell, maybe she realises she likes him too, and she relaxes.</p><p>And then, suddenly, their conversations aren’t tense or awkward any more, they’re funny.It turns out Remus Lupin is witty, and sharp as hell. He’d always known there had to be more to her, because Potter and Black were clever boys, and she obviously kept up with them, but he hadn’t expected this. If she wasn’t a werewolf he’d recruit her tomorrow.</p><p>A year turns into two, turns into three, and he finds himself thinking of her, saving articles he thinks she’ll like, making a note of the idiocy he encounters so he can tell her later, and bloody hell he never meant to be her friend but -</p><p>Here they are.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody sends her a job advert, just as the winter frost starts to hit, for a part time research assistant job with Filius Flitwick and his sister Favel. He must be excited about it because he sends it via owl, which he never does.</p><p>It’s looking for someone to support in research into runes and charm work, specifically protection and shielding charms. The advert is for 20 hours a week, at 2 galleons an hour, which is a very generous rate, for two years.</p><p>Charms isn’t really her area of expertise, but she’s qualified for it.</p><p>But, she hasn’t held down a wizarding job in almost three years. She’s been working almost exclusively in the muggle world, waitressing and bar tending, and she’s out of practice and when she gets an interview she’s shaking from nerves.</p><p>Moody’s waiting for her when she leaves, and takes her for dinner.</p><p>————</p><p>Flitwick drops her a visit a week later, in the evening, and by the end of their cup of tea they’ve bottomed out a plan and a timetable that avoids full moons and the days surrounding it for the next three months.</p><p>He’s cheerful and excited, and for once, Remus is too.</p><p>She apparates to Moody’s that same evening, and he’s already dressed for bed but he lets her in anyway. When she tells him she’s got the job he says ‘well done’ and invites her to join him for a night cap.</p><p>————</p><p>She puts flowers on the graves and doesn’t think about Harry, alone in the muggle world. (That’s a lie, she thinks about him so often that she only has to close her eyes, and she can see him behind her lids. Or what she think he looks like now. His sixth birthday passes, and Remus puts flowers on the graves, because no one else will.)</p><p>She rips herself apart the full moon six months later and nearly slices through her carotid artery. When she wakes and finds blood pouring out of her, it only takes a moment to call for Moody.</p><p>She gets really drunk two weeks after that, nostalgic and weepy, grieving those she’s lost - Lily, James, Peter, Marlene, Dorcus - and those still alive - Alice and Frank, Sirius - and she’s retching into the gutter, and god this hurts, and once again it only takes a moment to call Moody.</p><p>He comes to get her without comment or irritation. He wraps her up in the blanket he keeps on the back of his sofa, and makes her a cup of tea.</p><p>————</p><p>‘Remus Lupin,’ Moody says slowly, one Friday evening when the sky is grey and foggy, and they’ve forgone going out and instead are bundled up in Moody warm, cozy kitchen.</p><p>‘That’s my name.’ Remus sings back from where she’s sat at the table, flicking through witch weekly idly.</p><p>‘Ironic. Your parents really fucked you over when they named you, didn’t they. Call it a self fulfilling prophecy or whatever.’</p><p>Remus looks up at him slowly, and just because he has his back to her where he’s stirring the pot on the stove, she doesn’t think for one second he’s missed the look on her face.</p><p>‘That would be true,’ she says, slowly, ‘if it was my real name.’</p><p>It’s hard to surprise Moody, but she’s done it.</p><p>He turns to her, quickly, eye spinning and eyebrows raised.</p><p>‘Come again?’</p><p>‘Oh, yes please,’ she says deadpan, and Moody laughs and waves the spoon at her.</p><p>‘Cheap shot,’ he chides, ‘and don’t deflect. Remus Lupin isn’t your real name?’</p><p>‘No. It’s not.’</p><p>Moody serves the chilli, and puts the plate in front of her, and she thanks him.</p><p>‘You’re taking the piss,’ he accuses, around a mouthful, and Remus shakes her head.</p><p>‘I’m actually not. I wasn’t born Remus Lupin. We changed our names after I was bitten, because there was a lot of press around the attack. We used a couple of different names when I was young. I’d picked Remus Lupin by the time I was eleven and started school. My mum begged me to pick something less-‘</p><p>‘Obvious?’</p><p>Remus laughs, ‘yeah, obvious works. I think the word she used was ‘pretentious’ actually, but my letter was addressed ‘Remus Lupin.’ It’s been my name for a long time now.’</p><p>Moody is thinking hard, she can tell. He knows roughly when she was bitten, knows that it was when she was a young child, and he’s trying to remember the story.</p><p>‘I bet you already know my real name,’ She says. ‘If I say it to you, you’ll remember the story.’</p><p>‘Go on then.’</p><p>Remus takes a bite of dinner, and stalls.</p><p>‘I’ve never told anyone. Now that my parents are dead, the number of people who know are - well - Dumbledore and me. I don’t recon anyone else does.’</p><p>Moody doesn’t say anything, eating steadily. He lets her figure it out for herself.</p><p>‘Alice Munsten,’ she says finally.</p><p>Moody drops his fork.</p><p>‘<em>Fuck off.</em>’</p><p>‘It’s true.’</p><p>‘Alice Munsten. Fuck me, I remember that. I thought she’d died.’</p><p>‘That’s what my father wanted everyone to think. It was safer.’</p><p>Moody looks at her closely. She knows what he’s thinking. She’s seen the papers of her attack, her parents had kept copies, and there were photos. In the pictures, her father rushes to St Mungo’s, a small blonde child clutched in his arms, bleeding.</p><p>They’d been front page news for weeks.</p><p>Moody scoops up fork from where it landed in his dinner.</p><p>‘Alice,’ he tries, and it sounds alien to both of them.</p><p>‘Remus is better,’ she says, as if it doesn’t really matter.</p><p>‘Remus.’</p><p>‘Remus.’</p><p>————</p><p>For her thirtieth birthday Moody gives her a present.</p><p>He pops around unexpectedly two days after her birthday. He doesn’t apologise for the delay but mutters that he never sends things in the post, and that’s a good enough excuse. He declines a cup of tea, and hurries himself out of the house before she can open the card he’s given her.</p><p>If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was embarrassed.</p><p>When she opens the card, it’s garishly pink with a big sparkly ’30’ on the front which makes her laugh, and when she opens it a small flat envelope falls out. A glance at the card shows Moody’s signed his name, and written nothing else, and when she opens the smaller envelope -</p><p>It’s a necklace. Silver and delicate, a swirling heart with a small diamond in the middle. It’s expensive, and, when she inspects it closely, old. On the back, when she flips it over is an intricately engraved ‘M’, and Moody’s family are not pureblood, technically, but they are an old wizarding family. Old enough to have heirlooms and Remus is sure that she’s holding one of them.</p><p>She knows he has a sibling somewhere, she thinks from conversations they’ve had it’s a sister. And she knows he has a nephew, possibly two somewhere, but that he doesn’t see them. That he doesn’t have any other family living.</p><p>It’s -</p><p>It’s too much. It’s incredibly personal, and it carries a weight and an emotion that they’ve never spoken about, in the years they’ve been -</p><p>In the seven years they’ve been friends. </p><p>When she was twenty four she told him that she already knew she wasn’t going to live to thirty.</p><p>it’s oddly humbling to find out that she was wrong.</p><p>She puts the necklace on, and admires it in the mirror. It’s not too big, and the chain is a nice length.</p><p>You old sap, she thinks fondly.</p><p>————</p><p>The next time they meet, a few weeks later, when Remus gate crashes his ministry leaving do at his request, she wears the necklace and it hangs gently on her collar bone. A couple of old witches eye her suspiciously, but Moody’s scowl melts away when he spots her and he buys her a glass of wine.</p><p>She ends up sitting with Moody and a bunch of new recruits, who are desperate to gain Moody’s insight before he leaves them, and she sniggers into her drink as they ask question after question.</p><p>Kingsley Shacklebolt joins them after a while, and she remembers him vaguely. They’ve sort of crossed paths before. He joined the order towards the end, and she shared a dorm with his sister at school, but she’s never had a proper conversation with him. She recognises him from Moody’s bitching though. He likes Shacklebolt, she remembers, thinks he’s a good auror. Trustworthy.</p><p>When Moody introduces them gruffly, Shacklebolt shakes her hand, his eyes intense and his smile soft, and says ‘Kingsley, please’ and she thinks, <em>oh</em>. <em>Hello</em>.</p><p>A glance at Moody says he’s immediately regretting his decision to introduce them, but when Shacklebolt - Kingsley - says ‘Do you want another drink?’ Remus says yes. And later when he says, ‘do you want to get out of here?’ she says <em>yes</em>.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody spies Lupin and Shacklebolt sneaking out of his leaving do at half past eleven.</p><p>He watches them through the wall, follows them down the hallway, and when they’ve successfully avoided all wondering eyes except his, he watches as they hold hands and kiss by the floo ports.</p><p>A conversation later, and they disappear into the flames.</p><p>He’s still annoyed an hour later when he gets home, he stomps about, kicking off his shoes and he makes himself a cup of tea.</p><p>Lupin and Shacklebolt.</p><p>Lupin and Shacklebolt.</p><p>Wait. A. Damned. Second.</p><p>
  <em>Lupin and Shacklebolt.</em>
</p><p>This could be a good thing, he thinks suddenly, brightening.</p><p>He likes Shacklebolt. He likes Shacklebolt a lot - the boy’s been an auror for a long time now, over ten years, and he’s good. Skilled. Patient. Clever. Not bigoted.</p><p>And Lupin is, well, Lupin’s always been a bit of a mess, but she’s captivating in her own way, pretty enough. Clever. Funny.</p><p>They’d make a pretty good couple now he thinks about it, well balanced, evenly matched.</p><p>There’s the werewolf issue. If Shacklebolt shows his true colours on that Moody’s going to beat him, but Moody doesn’t think he will. Shacklebolt’s always been sympathetic to the werewolves they encounter, implied once that a distant family member was infected.</p><p>This could be a very good thing indeed.</p><p>————</p><p>Three days later Remus takes Moody a Shepard's Pie as an apology for sleeping with his favourite colleague.</p><p>She thinks he’s going to be sullen and grumpy, but evidently he’s had time to process it and is surprisingly, shockingly, on board. He’s almost gleeful when he asks about Kingsley, and when she’s going to see him next.</p><p>It’s disturbing. Evidently retirement has already gone to his head.</p><p>————</p><p>A few months later Moody’s patronus flashes up at half past four in the morning, and Remus nearly has a heart attack.</p><p>He doesn’t really send for her. Hasn’t ever, actually, now she thinks about it. There’s no message, but she recognises the bull for what it is, and pulls on a jumper quickly, and apparates to his.</p><p>It’s quiet on the road, and outside the cottage, but she can see his lights are on, and when she lets herself in he’s sat at his table and his wand arm is wrapped in a towel, stained bright red with blood.</p><p>‘Fuck Moody!’ She cries, and hurries over to him.</p><p>‘Don’t panic,’ he drawls, ‘it’s nothing. I don’t want to go to Mungo’s that’s all.’</p><p>That’s not as comforting as he thinks it is. Moody is known, famously, for telling the healers, when his leg was cursed off, ‘It’s nothing, now make sure you catch that fucker.’</p><p>He could be bleeding to death, and he’d still say ‘it’s nothing.’</p><p>‘Let me see,’ Remus snaps at him, and he willingly hands his arm over and when she peels the tea towel back she can see he’s - somehow - scraped most of the skin off his forearm. The wound is clean, but deep, and there’s blood pouring out, so Remus packs it again.</p><p>‘Hold that,’ and then she heads to his bathroom to grab his first aid kit.</p><p>She dabs it with murtlap essence, and is pleased when the skin starts to knit together. Remus runs her wand over the wound, a couple of times, muttering the healing spells she knows, and it only takes a couple of minutes before Remus is happy that Moody’s going to be fine. She makes him drink a blood replenisher, even though he bitches about it he eventually submits and chucks it back.</p><p>‘What the hell Moody?’ she sighs, and then turns to put the kettle on, helping herself to the contents of his kitchen cupboards.</p><p>‘Don’t worry about it,’ he tries, but Remus turns and points the tea spoon at him.</p><p>‘Don’t you dare. It’s five o’clock in the bloody morning, and you’ve shredded your arm. What happened?’</p><p>Moody frowns, but it’s not a guilty frown, it’s an embarrassed one.</p><p>‘Are you drunk?’</p><p>Moody nods. ‘Aye, little bit. Mighta splinched myself a little bit, don’t worry about it.’</p><p>Splinched himself.</p><p>Remus sighs in relief. ‘Splinched? You? Mighty auror Alastor Moody?’</p><p>Moody flips her off.</p><p>‘Where have you been?’</p><p>Moody shifts his feet awkwardly, and purses his lips. They sit in a silent stalemate for a moment, and then Moody gets to his feet, and accepts the glass of water she offers.</p><p>‘I’m going bed,’ Moody grumbles eventually. Remus shakes her head.</p><p>‘Fine, don’t tell me. I’m going to head back,’ Remus says, wiping down the table.</p><p>‘Stay, if you want. Spare room.’</p><p>And to be honest, the bed in Moody’s spare room is comfier than the one in her parent’s old house, so she takes her cup of tea, and lets herself in.</p><p>There’s a pair of her pyjamas in the drawer, and she helps herself to one of his spare toothbrushes, and she flops into bed, even though the sun is starting to rise.</p><p>There’s something warm in her chest.</p><p>When Moody cooks them breakfast later that morning, and they sit in comparable silence, he finally mutters ‘I went to see some family. It didn’t - I just wanted to come home. Shouldn’t have apparated drunk.’</p><p>‘I’m sorry.’</p><p>‘Don’t fret, it’s not unexpected.’</p><p>Remus gives him the last fried egg, and Moody tips his cup of tea to her in thanks.</p><p>————</p><p>She ends up staying at Moody’s for most of the weekend, because although he’s not in a good mood exactly, he clearly doesn’t want to be alone.</p><p>So Remus makes herself comfortable on his sofa, and amuses herself reading through his old case files, and making snarky notes in them.</p><p>She inadvertently solves one, or at least restarts it, when she spots a secondary charm the observing auror missed, and that finally shakes Moody out of his strange mood. He grins widely, and takes great glee in making detailed notes on it and putting it in his work bag.</p><p>They end up going to the pub down the corner, Remus having to borrow a jumper and some tracky bottoms, and they spend a pleasant evening gossiping.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody passes over the case file to Amelia Bones the following Wednesday, and she shouts at him for keeping files even though he’s retired, and then rolls her eyes when she skims through it.</p><p>‘I could have spotted that,’ she gripes, ‘who declared this closed?’</p><p>‘Wasn’t me.’ Moody says cheerily, and Amelia sighs deeply and rubs her eyes.</p><p>‘Get out of my office,’ she says, ‘and pass that file back to someone who actually works here. And bring back the other files you’re hoarding. I’m serious Moody.’</p><p>He hands the file off to Shacklebolt with a grin, and then bunks off around lunch time.</p><p>Maybe he’ll see if Lupin fancies a drink.</p><p>When he gets to her house, as grotty and run down as always, he finds her worn out, peaky, and limping. <em>Shit</em>, he thinks, full moon yesterday. He’d forgotten.</p><p>He bullies her into coming back to his cottage, and doesn’t let up until she’s settled on his sofa and has let him wrap up her knee.</p><p>He makes them dinner, and when she snoozes off on his sofa he lets her rest and throws a blanket over her.</p><p>————</p><p>Kingsley makes Remus dinner, and they sit in his London flat to eat.</p><p>It’s a small flat, but Kingsley lives alone, and that tells Remus how much money he earns. He’s an average cook, but a good conversationalist and she likes him.</p><p>Actually, she likes him a lot.</p><p>She likes the way he watches, forever cataloguing and analysing. The way that he moves, all sleek muscles and graceful movements. She’s obsessed with his hands - the way he holds her face when they kiss, the way he strokes over her neck and shoulders. She likes the comments he makes below his breath, all snide and sarcastic.</p><p>She <em>likes</em> him.</p><p>‘You and Moody make me laugh,’ he says, over dessert.</p><p>‘What do you mean?’</p><p>‘He likes you. He cares for you, and I’ve never seen him really care for anyone before.’</p><p>Remus nods. It’s funny to hear observations about her friendship with Moody from an outside perspective.</p><p>‘He probably saved me, you know.’</p><p>Kingsley doesn’t ask, but he raises his eyebrows.</p><p>Remus puts down her spoon.</p><p>‘In the wake of - of Lily and James, I was not in a good place. And that’s probably an understatement. But somehow Moody noticed. He knew. And he helped me out. I owe him a lot.’</p><p>Kingsley hums, and reaches out to take her hand.</p><p>‘I’m glad that you had him.’</p><p>‘He’s a weirdo,’ Remus laughs, ‘but I’m lucky to have him.’</p><p>When they sit on the sofa later, Kingsley tucks her under his arm, she’s pressed against the length of his body. They kiss, slowly, gently.</p><p>She likes him a lot.</p><p>————</p><p>It’s Moody who comes to her the evening Sirius breaks out of Azkaban. He’s got advance notice from a friend in the auror office.</p><p>He appears outside her derelict house, and he doesn’t take no for an answer. Makes her pack a bag, and hides her away at his. Casts all the wards he knows before he tells her why, and when Kingsley comes and joins them later, he walks past the cottage four times before Moody takes pity and goes to get him.</p><p>She’s not sure if they’re hiding her from Sirius, or from the <em>ministry</em>. Whether they think the threat is a vengeful lunatic seeking to finish the job he started, or the bureaucracy who might see her as an accomplice.</p><p>Either way, she sits curled up on his sofa with a cup of tea, and she wonders what she’s ever done to inspire such loyalty. Moody and Kingsley sit like guard dogs, wands out ready to jump to her defence. She’s long known that Moody will come and get her at three in the morning if she’s too drunk to apparate home, that’s the corner stone of their relationship after all, but she’s never really known that he’s willing to fight the ministry itself for her.</p><p>————</p><p>A week later Dumbledore’s offer comes, and it’s too tempting. Although it’s a bad idea she takes it anyway, and gets on the Hogwarts express that September as Professor Lupin, and honestly, it’s a bit like a dream come true.</p><p>————</p><p>To Be Continued.</p><p>————</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Teachers Are Real People Too</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Remus just about looses her mind when she wakes from her impromptu snooze, to find herself face to face with a dementor, and, more importantly, Harry. </p><p> </p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A/N - So, I'm not sure what planet I've been living on, but the chances of me covering five Harry Potter books in one chapter was a bit beyond me! This fic has grown now to three chapters instead of two lol. This chapter covers POA and GOF, taking us up to the end of GOF/beginning of OOP. </p><p>This is where we really start to move away from canon and start to earn our AU tag. </p><p>Warnings - there is a scene in this chapter where Remus is attacked, and it's implied that the attacker though that she was going to sleep with him. It's not explicit, and nothing more/worse happens, but if that's something that might impact you, please keep yourself safe and skip over it. It's the section that starts 'It's strange being back in her old office.' </p><p>Enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>———-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You and I used to shine like a jewel</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But time's been nothing to us but cruel</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Sweet Illusions’ byRyan Adams and the Cardinals</em>
</p><p>———-</p><p>Remus just about looses her mind when she wakes from her impromptu snooze, to find herself face to face with a dementor, and, more importantly, <em>Harry</em>.</p><p>Honestly, she’s not sure which one of them frightens her more.</p><p>Dementor dealt with, chocolate handed out, and the reality of her decision to return to Hogwarts sets in. Maybe this was a mistake.</p><p>There are so many things she wants to say to Harry:</p><p><em>Sorry</em>, she’d start with. <em>Sorry for your parents. Sorry I wasn’t there. </em></p><p>But what good is that, really?</p><p>
  <em>I’m here now.</em>
</p><p>Better, but still, worthless.</p><p>
  <em>I won’t let Sirius get you.</em>
</p><p>That's the best. And, that’s the truth.</p><p>She doesn’t say any of this to Harry, of course, because she’s his teacher now. There has to be a level of distance between them, professionalism. Never mind the fact that she changed his nappies and rocked him to sleep, once upon a time. So she says them to Moody instead, and they’ve talked about so many things over the years, but somehow they’ve never spoken about Harry.</p><p>So she talks, crouched by the fire in her office until her knees go numb, and he listens.</p><p>Then, in his eternal wisdom, he tells her to stop over thinking and get some fucking rest.</p><p>That’s fair enough.</p><p>————</p><p>Shacklebolt is moping.</p><p>Moody can see it clearly.</p><p>Officially, Moody has retired from the ministry. Unofficially, he still runs training and lends his expertise to ongoing cases. A consultant, of sorts.</p><p>Actually, it’s the best of both worlds, because he can shout at people and give his expertise, but Amelia Bones can’t do shit to him any more.</p><p>He should have retired years ago.</p><p>But it means that when he’s in the kitchen, helping himself to whatever’s in the fridge despite the warning signs spellotaped to the front, (because fuck you Amelia), and he spies Shacklebolt in his pod, and the man is -</p><p>Well.</p><p>Moping.</p><p>Sulking.</p><p>Brooding.</p><p>And he knows that it’s because Lupin’s up in Scotland, and even Moody’s barely spoken to her since she left. The only proper conversation they’ve had was the first night she got there, when Lupin had a full melt down over Harry Potter (not unexpected to be honest, Moody had been prepared for it), other than that it’s been scattered letters and brief floo calls.</p><p>Moody would be more annoyed, if she wasn’t so <em>happy</em>.</p><p>Lupin hasn’t had much happiness in her life, so Moody doesn’t begrudge her this in the slightest. He knows that Shacklebolt doesn’t either.</p><p>But either way, Shacklebolt is still sulking, and if Amelia cottons on it’ll be Moody’s arse she comes for.</p><p>When did Lupin and Shacklebolt’s romance become his problem?</p><p>(The minute you introduced them, the snide voice in his head mutters)</p><p>He wonders over to Shacklebolt’s pod, leans against the divider, obnoxiously eating left over curry he found in the fridge. He’s about to ask how Shacklebolt’s doing with the investigation into Black, when some kid with bright pink hair misjudges the step, inexplicably bounces off the opposite wall and falls head first into Shacklebolt’s pod, taking Moody’s lunch and most of Shacklebolt’s desk with her. Moody’s no expert, but the sound her head makes when it cracks against the floor sounds like a concussion to him.</p><p>There’s a pause, where they both look down at her bemusedly, Moody’s hands are still outstretched, holding thin air instead of the pate of food.</p><p>‘Fucking hell, shit, bugger, sorry,’ she says, clambering to her feet, using Moody’s un-offered arm to help herself up, and Shacklebolt cracks the first smile Moody’s seen on his face in over a week.</p><p>That’s how Tonks literally falls into their lives.</p><p>Moody spends the next six months desperately trying keep Tonks from falling over things, (‘you’re a grown woman,’ he shouts across the office, ‘it shouldn’t be that hard’), keep Shacklebolt above water (they go for drinks once a week, and by the end of the fourth week Moody thinks, oh fuck, I’ve made another friend haven’t I?), keep an eye as best he can on Lupin (she signs her letters ‘love Remus’ now, which is, he can admit in his own mind, quite sweet) and avoid Amelia because she’s out for his blood (he’s not sure why, just in general.)</p><p>Tonks joins him and Shacklebolt for their weekly drinks, and when she says ‘I always thought Madam Bones fancied for you,’ Shacklebolt laughs, deep and genuine, and Moody tells her to ‘shut the fuck up.’</p><p>He makes her run drills four times in training the next day, instead of the typical two, out of spite and the knowledge that she’s hungover. She bitches at him the whole time, but two weeks later when she’s complimented on her form by an assessor, she gives Moody an arrogant thumbs up.</p><p>————</p><p>Hogwarts is like some kind of weird purgatory, Remus thinks, as she sits in her office (office! Two months ago she didn’t have heating in her house, let alone an office) marking essays.</p><p>For every good element, there’s something that digs in and makes her ache.</p><p>And every time she catches sight of Harry out of the corner of eye she feels ill.</p><p>————</p><p>Harry knocks on Remus’ office door, and he pokes his head around it, with a small crooked grin.</p><p>She waves him in, and makes him a cup of tea, and when he says ‘please can you help me fight dementors’ she thinks,<em> this is a bad idea.</em></p><p>What comes out is: ‘Yes, of course.’</p><p>And so her private lessons with Harry begin.</p><p>————</p><p>Snape delivers wolfsbane with a sneer, and Remus would be more annoyed if she couldn’t see the fear behind it. He loiters, with sharp digs and watches closely as she chugs it down in front of him to assuage his paranoia.</p><p>It helps.</p><p>No longer does she wake up after a full moon bleeding and ragged. She curls up in her office, and mentally plans her lessons, and wakes up with sore knees and nothing more.</p><p>It helps.</p><p>————</p><p>Sometimes, Remus forgets about Sirius. She forgets that she’s here because of Sirius.</p><p>And then he attacks the Fat Lady, gets all the way to Gryffindor tower, and suddenly Remus wonders if she should be frightened of him.</p><p>When she voices this thought to Moody, through the fire, he snorts into his dinner.</p><p>‘Frightened of Sirius Black? Don’t be stupid girl. Sirius Black should be frightened of you.’</p><p>He says it with such belief, such stark mater-of-fact-ness that Remus sits bemused for a moment.</p><p>It echos in her mind.</p><p>‘Sirius Black should be frightened of you.’</p><p>When he breaks into Gryffindor tower the second time, Remus prowls the castle and hopes desperately to find him.</p><p>He <em>should</em> be afraid of her.</p><p>————</p><p>Harry casts a corporeal patronus at thirteen years old, and Remus isn’t surprised at all to see Prongs skip around the classroom, as light footed and goofy as he ever was.</p><p>A stag is a very majestic creature, she tells Harry, signifying steadiness, and balance. He leaves the classroom with a skip in his step, chattering away to Ron and Hermione at 100 miles a minute.</p><p>She doesn't tell him that Prongs once got his antlers stuck in the curtains around Peter’s bed, and got caught there for a whole afternoon because he hadn’t mastered changing back just yet. That he took out the light fitting getting himself free, and to this day she suspects the light fitting over the second bed in the top boy’s dorm, is attached with Spellotape, bubble gum and a questionable sticking spell.</p><p>She wonders if she should tell Harry this.</p><p>She doesn’t.</p><p>————</p><p>When Moody finds out that Sirius Black has broken into Hogwarts twice, he throws old case files against the wall and nearly takes out Shacklebolt’s eye.</p><p>‘Fucking, shit’ he shouts, and stomps up and down. 'How can this happen? The man is like a ghost. How can he get past a hundred and fifty dementors and all the wards on the castle?’</p><p>Shacklebolt doesn’t say anything, but Moody catches a flicker of something cross Lupin’s face from where her head sits in the fireplace. He rounds on her.</p><p>‘What was that?’</p><p>‘Sorry?’ she says, eyebrows raised, the picture of innocence.</p><p>‘Why did you make that face? What do you know?’</p><p>‘What face? I breathed in some cinders I think,’ and Lupin coughs a bit.</p><p>Moody sees red.</p><p>‘Don’t fucking lie to me!’ he roars, ‘you know something.’</p><p>Lupin’s face shutters. She pulls back from the fire, and the call closes as she walks away.</p><p>‘She doesn’t know anything,’ Kingsley says serene, ‘she’s as worried as you. She's not helping him.’</p><p>‘She knows something,’ Moody snaps, ‘I’m not suggesting she's helping him. But she knows something.’</p><p>————</p><p>Remus snatches the map from Harry, and she’s shaking with rage and for once she doesn’t care whether he sees it or not.</p><p>‘I am astounded that you haven't handed this in’ she snaps, ‘do you have any idea what would happen if this fell into the hands of Sirius Black?’</p><p>Harry is sullen and angry.</p><p>‘Just so you know, professor, I don’t think that map always works.’</p><p>Remus turns from her desk and watches him hovering in the door way.</p><p>'It showed someone tonight, someone I know to be dead.’</p><p>‘Who’s that?’</p><p>‘Peter Pettigrew.’</p><p>And then Harry leaves, and doesn’t care for a moment that he’s brought Remus’ world crashing down around her.</p><p>Remus sits at her desk all night long, and she examines the map searching desperately for ‘Peter Pettigrew’ or ‘Sirius Black’ and there's nothing. There’s nothing there, and Remus thinks that she might be loosing her mind.</p><p>————</p><p>It’s late one Friday in early March, when Lupin turns up at Moody’s cottage.</p><p>They haven't spoken for weeks, not since their falling out through the fireplace, when Moody accused her of knowing something and Lupin denied it. Moody lets her in, and Lupin helps herself to his kettle and his tea collection without asking.</p><p>But she makes him one too, and uses his favourite mug, and when they sit in heavy silence on opposite sides of the dining table Moody watches closely with both his eyes.</p><p>‘I need your help,’ Lupin starts, ‘or rather, I think I need help, and I don’t know what to do about it.’</p><p>‘Is this about Sirius Black?’ Moody asks, because he may care about Lupin a lot, but he’s still pissed that she lied to his face.</p><p>‘Yes.’</p><p>'Are you going to tell me what you’re hiding?’</p><p>She has the grace to look ashamed.</p><p>‘Yes. I’ll - I’ll tell you everything if you want to hear it.’</p><p>Moody sighs. He looks around his kitchen slowly, anywhere to avoid looking at her face, and her sad eyes. They’ve had a lot of conversations here, over the years. Some good, some bad. The counter is cracked on the left hand side from where Lupin dropped his big cast iron pan, and there's a stain on the sink where she soaked a top in bleach and forgot to spell it beforehand.</p><p>It tells of a lasting friendship. One of the longest that Moody has had for a longtime.</p><p>‘Of course I want to hear,’ and then because they’ve become fairly good at being honest with each other, ‘I’m pissed that you lied to me.’</p><p>Lupin nods, slowly.</p><p>‘I didn’t want you to think badly of me,’ she says, quiet.</p><p>‘We’ve all made our mistakes. And yours involved throwing up on my chrysanthemums.’</p><p>She does laugh.</p><p>‘It’s a bit worse than throwing up on the chrysanthemums.’</p><p>‘Go on then.'</p><p>So she does.</p><p>The tale Lupin spins then, starting at the beginning nearly twenty years previous. It leaves Moody with more questions, but it also explains<em> a lot.</em></p><p>It explains the loyalty. It explains the trust that Potter had in his friends.</p><p>She pulls out the map, and shows him, explains how she’d drawn it with her mother’s good ink over the summer between her fourth and fifth year. How she and her friends had masked the enchantments, and how it had taken hours and hours of research. How it got confiscated by the caretaker just before they graduated, and whilst he never knew what it was, he had known it was something.</p><p>‘The map is infallible,’ she says, waving her hands, ‘the nature of the enchantment means that it doesn’t make mistakes. It’s tied to a personal magical signature, and so it’s not going to get confused, or give the wrong year, or anything like that. So I don’t understand how Harry could have seen Peter on the map. And if Peter were alive, why hasn’t he come forward before? I don't understand.’</p><p>Moody examines the map slowly.</p><p>It’s an extraordinary feat, that’s for sure. He can feel the weight of the magic, and he watches as the name tags and foot prints move across the parchment. He watches Dumbledore pace in his office.</p><p>Lupin sighs, and rests her head on her hands.</p><p>‘I haven’t told, because - because I told myself it didn’t matter. That it wasn’t a big deal. So I didn’t have to admit that, that it was all for me. That I lead them astray.’</p><p>Moody thinks, hard. A picture is starting to build in his mind, and whilst he doesn’t like it, it does go some way to explain things.</p><p>Answer some questions that have been haunting them for years now.</p><p>He should shout at her. He knows she's expecting it, and she’s withheld <em>essential</em> information that could have helped the investigation. Everyone has been searching for a man.</p><p>No-one has been looking for a <em>dog</em>.</p><p>Fucks sake.</p><p>But he can also see that she's expecting it. And Lupin has carried around more than her fair share of guilt in her lifetime.</p><p>‘What animal was Pettigrew?’ he says, even though she's already told him.</p><p>‘A rat.'</p><p>‘A rat,’ he repeats back.</p><p>Lupin peeks up at him, from between her fingers.</p><p>‘What do you think?’ she asks.</p><p>‘I think - I think that - Reports on Black from Azkaban, was that he was coping better than other prisoners. That he was sane, where others imprisoned for the same length of time were either dead or insane. The effect of dementors on animals is not examined, but I think it’s fair to assume that by spending time as a dog, preserved him in a way that was unexpected.’</p><p>‘Sure.’</p><p>'I think we can also assume that this is how he escaped, and how he has avoided escape for so long. And how he was able to enter the Hogwarts.’</p><p>‘Ok.’</p><p>‘Say for a second that Potter was right. He did see Pettigrew on the map. In Hogwarts. I don't think it's reaching too much to assume that in the same way Black has avoided detection through his animagus form, so has Pettigrew.’</p><p>‘If Peter is still alive, why wouldn’t he have come forward before now?’</p><p>Silence hangs heavy between them for a long moment. Moody has an answer to that question, and he suspects that Lupin knows it, but it's not helpful for either of them right now.</p><p>‘Go back to school,’ he tells her instead. ‘Keep an eye out for a rat. I’ll see what I can do.’</p><p>Lupin floos back through his fireplace, and Moody sits there for a long while more.</p><p>The bottom line is that no innocent man would hide for so long, and they both know it.</p><p>————</p><p>It doesn’t take long.</p><p>Now that Remus is looking, she sees suspicious activity <em>everywhere</em>. She brushes off the paranoia that saved her life in the first war, and listens. She listens to all conversations, between students, and teachers. She doesn’t dismiss any detail as too small or too insignificant. She takes an interest in her students’ lives, and it’s barely a month later, a month into this recon mission that she's set herself that she learns that the Weasleys won money in the lottery over the summer. That there was picture of them in the daily prophet.</p><p>Two weeks later she asks Harry for a word after class. His homework is poor and rushed, and to a lower standard than she knows him capable of. When she questions him gently, she learns that he’s upset because his friends have had a falling out, and aren't speaking.</p><p>They’ve had a falling out, because Hermione’s cat has attacked Ron’s rat, that is now missing. That Ron has had a rat - Scabbers - for years.</p><p>After her next defence class with the third years, Remus questions Ron gently about his rat, and then she's convinced. She tells him:</p><p>‘I’m fairly good with animals. If you do find him, and you want me to take a look at him, just let me know.’</p><p>Remus feels guilty when she sees Harry and Ron’s grateful faces looking up at her, and Harry mellows towards her then. She thinks he’s forgiven her for taking the map.</p><p>————</p><p>When Lupin tells Moody that Harry Potter’s best friend has a rat that is now missing, Moody makes a plan of action.</p><p>He’s been around too long to believe in coincidences.</p><p>It's easy to find out from Amelia Bones what day Fudge went to Azkaban, what day he met Black, and when Moody checks the prophet from that day, sure enough there’s the picture of the Weasleys. With a rat on the boy's shoulder.</p><p>The fact that the rat is missing a toe - where, if it were human, the index finger would be - just confirms what Moody already knows.</p><p>————</p><p>‘I still don't understand,’ Lupin laments, sat once again around Moody’s kitchen table. Shacklebolt has joined them, because this is going to hit the fan sooner rather than later, and Moody wants at least a couple of aurors onside.</p><p>He thinks he might go and get Tonks next.</p><p>‘I don’t understand why he hasn’t come forward before.’</p><p>Shacklebolt opens his mouth, but Moody cuts him off.</p><p>‘Don’t be so stupid,’ he snaps at Lupin. ‘You're smarter than this. Use your brain. Why would a man hide as a rat for <em>twelve years</em>?’</p><p>Lupin is silent, but Shacklebolt fills in.</p><p>‘A man would hide as a rat for twelve years, because he has something to hide. These are not the actions of a man who is innocent.’</p><p>‘Aye.’</p><p>‘These are not the actions of a man who is innocent,’ Lupin repeats slowly.</p><p>————</p><p>When it goes, it goes quickly. As these things tend to.</p><p>Moody gets a hurried patronus from Lupin, on the full moon in June, and her panic and stress is clear, even if the message isn’t.</p><p>When he walks up to the castle, from the front gates, he spots a great black dog tackle what looks like the Weasley boy. The boy hits the floor with an almighty smack, and Moody acts with fifty years of experience and in a flash of light the dog is stunned.</p><p>He limps over to the three children, one of whom is Harry Potter, he spies the rat that Weasley is holding.</p><p>He stuns the rat too, just in case.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus runs out of the castle doors, and she doesn't know whether she should call someone else, whether she should leave it, what she should do, when she gets to the stretch of grass by the whomping willow -</p><p>Harry, Ron, and Hermione. With Moody. A stunned dog - Padfoot, she thinks, recognisable even now - and, clutched in Moody’s fist: a rat. Wormtail.</p><p>Remus laughs. She puts her hand over her mouth, and lets out an unhinged hysterical laugh, and she suddenly understands Sirius a bit better.</p><p>‘We should - we should -‘ She gestures vaguely to the castle, and laughs again.</p><p>‘Aye,’ Moody says, ‘Come on.’</p><p>Harry, Ron and Hermione follow with wide eyes, and Moody levitates the dog.</p><p>Remus can't stop <em>laughing</em>.</p><p>————</p><p>Dumbledore’s office is rammed.</p><p>Lupin tells the story again. To everyone. She starts at the beginning, and she won’t meet Dumbledore’s eyes, but instead speaks to Harry.</p><p>She’s just finished, when the aurors arrive. Moody is relieved to see Shacklebolt and Tonks among them.</p><p>There’s a stunned vague sort of silence. It’s a tall tale, Moody admits, but there's one way to prove it. So, Dumbledore raises his wand, and with a flick, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew appear and the animals melt away.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus has to leave them to it.</p><p>Nearly too late, she feels the pull of the moon beneath her skin, and when she meets Moody’s eye he nods.</p><p>She has to run, across the grounds, and she feels out of control, but she gets to the shack in time.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus' departure from Hogwarts is painful and sad. And she’s wrecked all career options for herself for, probably, the rest of her life.</p><p>But Kingsley comes to meet her at Hogsmeade, and his hands are warm and he holds her close, hugs her tight with the sort of desperation that aches, so she kisses him back and says ‘I’m ok, I’m ok.’</p><p>He and Moody have obviously been talking, because he doesn’t take her home, he takes her back to his London flat, warded and secure, and he just says, ‘Remus please,’ and she shrugs and unpacks her books and helps herself to his tea.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus takes to her bed for the better part of the week, to process the events of the last year.</p><p>(It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she really fucked up her knee in the June full moon, the first one in almost a year without wolfsbane, and that Kingsley’s bed in his London flat is the most comfortable bed she’s slept in - maybe ever.)</p><p>She drags herself out of bed two weeks into this convalescence at Kingsley’s belly laugh.When she shuffles into the kitchen, she’s met with a rueful Moody who tells her he’s going to be teaching Defence next year.</p><p>Remus sniggers into her tea, and promises to share her lesson plans.</p><p>‘Aye,’ Moody sighs, ‘Cheers.’</p><p>———— </p><p>It’s a punch in the fucking gut when Barty Crouch Jr gets a jump on him.</p><p>Moody’s angry. He’s so fucking <em>angry</em>, he can feel it burning in his stomach, in his chest. Locked in his own trunk, how bloody embarrassing.</p><p>He's gotten complacent.</p><p>He’s gotten <em>old</em>.</p><p>By the time he comes around, from where he’d been knocked unconscious, he can't judge anything - the day, the time, the location, anything.</p><p>But it doesn’t take too long to piece together the plan - Hogwarts, the tournament, the goblet most likely, Harry Potter.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus doesn’t speak to Moody for a couple of weeks once he leaves for Hogwarts. He’s notoriously paranoid about opening post, and he’s been a bit distant recently so she leaves it.</p><p>She feels a bit lost without him though, to be honest.</p><p>Although she has bigger problems. </p><p>An owl arrives, one afternoon. She vaguely recognises it as an expensive breed. The parchment when she opens the letter is also expensive too, and when her eyes drop to the signature at the bottom it’s like a punch in the gut.</p><p>
  <em>Yours, Sirius</em>
</p><p>Merlin.</p><p>It’s like -</p><p>Nothing that she’s known before.</p><p>Remus sinks, slowly into the chair at the kitchen table, grateful that Kingsley is at work and she’s alone.</p><p>
  <em>Dear Remus,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This is the strangest letter I’ve ever written. I’m not sure what to say, so I’ll just say what I need to, and we’ll take it from there.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I didn’t do it. I wasn't the secret keeper, in the end. We switched, and we didn’t tell you because we - I - thought it was you. Lily and James weren’t convinced, but I was. I’m sorry. You know what happens next. Peter was the spy, he told Voldemort where they were. Lily and James. I went after Peter. You know the rest.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I escaped Azkaban as Padfoot, which I think you’ll have already figured out. He saved me, really. Let me keep my sanity.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m sure you know all this already, but in case you don’t I wanted you to know.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Most importantly, I’m sorry.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m so sorry Moony.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There’ll be a court case. I’m sure you’ve heard that too. I’m staying with Andromeda for the time being. I’d love to see you, if you can face it. I think we have a lot to talk about.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Come around at any time, if you want to.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll see you soon, hopefully.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yours, Sirius.</em>
</p><p>It could be worse, she thinks. He could have professed his undying love (unlikely, she thinks. Their love died a death many years ago now). Or he could have blamed her, for everything (more likely).</p><p>And he should blame her, a little bit. Just as she should blame him. The breakdown of their relationship had, undoubtedly, fed into the events that had happened next. There was no trust between them, in the end.</p><p>But this, this invitation. Remus doesn’t know what to do with it.</p><p>————</p><p>She turns to Moody, of course. There’s no one that she trusts more or whose advice she truly values.</p><p>But there’s something weird going on.</p><p>He doesn’t answer her patronus, which is unusual nowadays, especially in the years since he’s retired. He doesn’t answer the flashing spell she sends his way, a cheap easy spell that sends a flicker of purple lights his way, a code they'd long ago established.</p><p>He responds to her flashing spell a couple of hours later, red sparks that mean 'all good’ (because green is, of course, too easy to guess). </p><p>There's nothing else.</p><p>Remus talks it over with Kingsley, in the end. He's insightful, and patient. Calm. Kind. But he's not Moody.</p><p>————</p><p>The house at the end of the drive is pretty. A red brick doll's house, with a white door and flowers hanging in baskets.</p><p>Andromeda’s house, if the address Sirius sent is correct. Remus has no reason to think otherwise.</p><p>If she were younger and less sure, the drunk desperate girl she used to be, then Remus would have hovered on the doorstep, filled with anxiety and insecurity.</p><p>But she's not. So she walks straight up to the door, in the heels she's borrowed from Kingsley's sister, and the dress she wore to Moody's retirement party, complete with necklace, and rings the bell.</p><p>A man answers, with kind blue eyes and a checkered jumper on.</p><p>‘Remus? Right?’ He says.</p><p>She nods. ‘Ted?’</p><p>‘That's me. Please come in.’</p><p>So she does.</p><p>————</p><p>Sirius looks good.</p><p>Remus turns the corner, walks through the door of the living room. Sirius gets to his feet, and they hover for a moment. It’s hard to say who moves first, but Sirius takes a step forward, and Remus opens her arms and then they’re embracing. Sirius clings to her, his arms tight around her ribcage. Remus squeezes his shoulders, presses her face into his neck. She strokes the back of his head, scratches her fingers in his hair the way he always liked, and if her eyes are watering then that’s fine because Sirius is crying too, big heaving sobs.</p><p>‘I’m sorry,’ he gasps out.</p><p>‘It’s ok, it’s ok. Shush now,’ Remus whispers back to him, and they’re rocking slowly, back and forth.</p><p>Over Sirius’ shoulder, Remus can see Andromeda fussing with a teapot and some cups.</p><p>She squeezes him tight - something about Sirius just makes her drop her guard - and then then lets go, stepping back.</p><p>It’s even harder to look him in the face.</p><p>‘Sit down, please,’ Andromeda says, setting the teapot on the table and Remus does.</p><p>Sirius is thin, thinner that she’s used to seeing. But not gaunt, and the spark of intelligence is clear in his eyes. His hair is neat, and his beard trimmed.</p><p><em>I should have brought Kingsley with me</em>, she thinks, <em>or Moody.</em></p><p>‘Moony,’ Sirius says, and Remus feels eighteen again. Eighteen and desperately in love with Sirius Black.</p><p>But she’s not eighteen any more.</p><p>‘Sirius. How are you?’</p><p>It’s a stupid question. Sirius answers it anyway.</p><p>‘Good. Better. Things are looking up for me now, thanks to Andy and Ted.’ He gestures to his cousin and her husband, ‘I’m lucky to have them.’</p><p>‘You’re more than welcome Sirius,’ Andromeda says. Ted takes a slurp from his tea.</p><p>Silence falls then. Awkward.</p><p>What do you say to someone who was wrongly imprisoned for twelve years, Remus wonders almost idly. A glance at Sirius’ face says he’s thinking something similar.</p><p>‘I heard about the court case,’ Remus starts. ‘I’m interested to see where it goes.’</p><p>‘Yeah,’ Sirius says, ‘fortunately there are still lawyers on Black family retainer. Andy got me a meeting with them. Things are looking up.’</p><p>‘If you need me to testify I will. I don’t know what evidence I can provide, but if you need me I’m there.’</p><p>‘Thank you,’ Sirius says solemn. ‘I appreciate that.’</p><p>‘We’ll let the lawyers know,’ Andromeda adds.</p><p>They all nod. Silence falls again.</p><p>Remus has not felt this uncomfortable in a long time.</p><p>————</p><p>She sends a letter to Moody in Scotland, even though she knows that he doesn’t believe anything he receives in the post.</p><p>She sends him blue sparks, and gets red and orange ones in return.</p><p>Every time she calls him on the floo he doesn’t answer.</p><p>Remus can take a hint, even, especially, when it’s something hard to swallow.</p><p>————</p><p>The only hope Moody has, he realises after several weeks have passed, is Lupin.</p><p>Crouch has been drugging Moody with veriterserum, so much so that Moody’s definitely verging on an an overdose. Even Crouch can see it.</p><p>So Moody gives honest answers to questions, tells Crouch the colour code he has with Lupin, spills his heart and his soul to some fucking stranger, and yet -</p><p>He thinks that he can get a message to Lupin. That he can get Crouch to behave in a way that will raise questions.</p><p>It just depends on Lupin having her brain turned on.</p><p>————</p><p>Time passes. Slowly and quickly.</p><p>Remus meets Kingsley's family. She has lunch with some old school friends. She applies for seventeen jobs and gets rejected from all of them. She rips herself apart at the full moon, goes to court to support Sirius, and applies for some more jobs.</p><p>She tries Moody again, but he doesn't respond.</p><p>————</p><p>The Hogshead is crowded, for once, and Remus finds herself tucked between Moody and Kingsley, pressed into the back corner. Aberforth looks stressed, for once, slightly overwhelmed by the amount of customers, but they take no notice of him. It’s Kingsley’s birthday.</p><p>Tonks - one of Moody’s new protégés apparently, although she doesn’t know because he won’t fucking talk to her - is in good form, tipsy and giggly, and holding attention. Moody is sullen, sipping from his pint and generally avoiding conversation. Remus wonders what threats Kingsley had to issue to get Moody here this evening. He’s barely made eye contact with anyone, and is staring into his beer.</p><p>Remus doesn’t really mind, in this instance, that Moody’s not his usual talkative self. She’s not quite recovered from the full moon, and she’s happy to sit quietly. Kingsley is warm and strong on her right, and despite her reservations about his reputation - her status as werewolf is public knowledge now, and she worries about his job - he holds her hand in his.</p><p>He’s comfortable, leant back in his chair, legs stretched out and relaxed. His most trusted friends are all here - her and Moody, obviously, his sisters are by the side, Dianna was in the same year as Remus at school, but they were never really close - so he sits and observes.</p><p>Moody, by contrast, is clearly uncomfortable. He’s not typically comfortable in a crowd, but his usual ticks are absent, his eye is still not swirling around, and his jaw is clenched tight, lips pursed. Remus wonders if he’s had a fight with someone, or maybe he feels guilty about ghosting her for the last couple of months. Either that or teaching is getting him down. It’s the first time Remus has seen him since the summer.</p><p>Remus nudges him with her shoulder. ’How’s school?’ she asks.</p><p>Moody takes a swill from his pint, and grunts noncommittally. ‘Fine. Some of them are clever, some aren’t. I think they’ll do alright though.’</p><p>‘How were your first years? I found the ones last year were difficult to get to focus, but once I-‘</p><p>‘They’re alright Lupin.’</p><p>‘Sure. Good.’ She says back, and she pauses awkwardly.</p><p>‘Come on Alastor’ She shoves him again, because she knows it annoys him, and grins at the twitch in his eye, ‘Cheer up, I’ll buy you another drink’.</p><p>He finishes his drink, and then hands out the pint glass to her. ‘Go on then.’</p><p>Kingsley’s smirking to her right.</p><p>She makes her way to the bar, buys another round of pints and when she returns her chair’s been taken, Hestia Jones is talking to Kingsley, heads bent low together, so Remus puts the drinks on the table and looks back to Moody.</p><p>She grins, ‘If you’re nice to me I’ll sit on your lap’ she winks at him, and finally, Moody grins back slowly.</p><p>‘Cheeky tart’ and Remus laughs. The worry in her chest eases.</p><p>————</p><p>It’s nearly midnight when the drinks start to wind down.</p><p>Most casual acquaintances have drifted away, leaving Kingsley’s close group of friends and family. It’s cold outside when they leave, early November, and there’s a bit of frost in the air. Kingsley holds her hand, and his fingers are warm and dry against her skin. She looks up at him, and he looks back at her with his dark eyes soft and intense.</p><p>He drops his head down slowly, and kisses her on the cheek gently.</p><p>Remus smiles.</p><p>‘Are you coming back with us?’ he asks, but she shakes her head.</p><p>‘I need to speak to Moody, while I’ve got him. I’m going to walk up to the school with him and use his floo home.’</p><p>‘Ok. I’ll see you tomorrow though?’</p><p>Remus turns her head to hide her smile, ‘of course.’ His answering smile is incredibly beautiful.</p><p>‘See you soon.’</p><p>He squeezes her hand, and when she turns around Moody is loitering by the path that heads back up to the school.</p><p>‘Come along old man,’ she says cheerily, ‘if you can keep up.’</p><p>Kingsley’s laugh follows them up the trail.</p><p>————</p><p>It’s strange being back in her old office. Moody’s decoration is sparse and minimal, unlike her who had taken glee in having an office to herself, and stuffed it full of books, and pictures, notes and research.</p><p>Remus shrugs off her coat, and lays if over the back of his desk chair. He has some notes on the table, lesson plans by the looks of it so she tilts her head to take a closer look.</p><p>She can hear Moody moving around the office, his wooden leg thumping on the floor.</p><p>‘I like your lesson plan for the third years,’ she says, ‘I found the Grindylow lesson went down particularly well for me. And the boggart of course. That was probably one of my best-‘</p><p>Moody grabs her around the waist, and presses her forward into the desk. Remus doesn’t scream, but it’s a close thing.</p><p>‘What are you doing!’ she cries, and Moody lets her turn around so she’s facing him.</p><p>‘What do you mean?’ His hands are on her thighs, and Remus’ heart plummets, a tight sick feeling in her chest. <em>What is happening?</em></p><p>‘You’ve been leading me on all night’ he says, and his voice is low and deep, ‘time to follow through.’</p><p>What. on earth.</p><p>‘Moody!’ she shrieks, and it’s almost embarrassing how her voice breaks. Her heart is pounding.</p><p>He leans forward, but Remus finally pulls her fighting instincts from wherever they’d been hidden, and shoves him, hard, towards the side of his bad leg, and he’s not expecting it so he stumbles.</p><p>It’s enough for Remus to draw her wand, and then they’re duelling. She sends a stunner towards him, but he deflects, and a nasty curse comes her way and she barely dives out of the way.</p><p>Moody throws himself towards her, and he’s heavy, he drags her towards him, and his face, <em>god his face,</em> is screwed up with a kind of anger and ferocity she’s never seen before.</p><p>‘Stop this!’ he snarls, and he puts all his weight on her shoulder, and is cracks painfully.</p><p>‘Get off!’ she screams, and how did she let this get so out of control?</p><p>There’s blood in her mouth, and Moody’s body pressed against hers. She flings a hex wordlessly and he flinches back at the sting. She’s up, again, throwing curse after curse. He’s a good dueller but he’s desperate and it makes him sloppy, and finally one of her hexes lands and before he knows it she’s stunned him and he hits the floor with an almighty thud.</p><p>Remus takes a moment.</p><p><em>Merlin</em>.</p><p>It takes a minute for her heart rate to slow, and she feels weak and shaky. Her shoulder aches, and her newly healed ribs from the full are re-broken by the feel of it.</p><p>Moody attacked her. <em>Moody</em>.</p><p>And it’s so inconceivable that for a moment she can only heave on the floor, and then finally it clicks together.</p><p>That’s not Moody. It can’t be.</p><p>She peers slowly over the broken chair at his body slumped on the floor, and it certainly looks like Moody, but that’s not hard if you have the right supplies.</p><p>Remus approaches slowly, but it’s not hard to pluck his hip flask from his pocket, and when she tips it out it’s not his customary tipple, but instead, obviously, polyjuice potion.</p><p>Embarrassingly Remus nearly tears up in relief. That’s not Moody. That’s someone else who just tried to -</p><p>There’s a howl from the chest in the corner, and Remus nearly jumps out of her skin.</p><p>‘Jesus fuck’ she whispers.</p><p>Her strength leaves her, and she slides down the wall slowly. It takes an inordinate amount of effort, but she flicks her fingers and sends a message to Dumbledore. It takes a few more minutes before she hears footsteps hurrying down the hallway, and McGonagall and Dumbledore burst in.</p><p>‘Oh my goodness’ McGonagall cries, and she’s kneeling down by Remus.</p><p>‘Polyjuce’ Remus says, and she gestures to Moody’s body.</p><p>Dumbledore looks grave. He’s extremely still, focused with an intensity that hurts Remus’ heart.</p><p>She closes her eyes.</p><p>‘No Remus,’ McGonagall says, ‘Stay awake, I’ve sent for Poppy.’</p><p>Dumbledore strides across the room, to the chest, and flings it open with a wave of his hand. He peers down, deeper than the chest should be and: ‘Alastor?’ he calls.</p><p>‘Aye’ is the gruff reply, ‘Took you fucking long enough.’</p><p>Another wave of Dumbledore’s hand, and the chest shutters up, and then he’s reaching in and helps Moody hop out.</p><p>Hop, literally, because his wooden leg is on the other side of the room with the imposter. They get him settled on the edge of the bed, and Remus can barely see him from behind her blurred eyes but there’s a huge gaping hole in his head where his eye is missing. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and rests his head in his hands for a moment. When he looks up, he looks straight ahead at her propped up against the wall.</p><p>‘Fuck Remus’,</p><p>‘I turned my back. It was stupid. He got the jump on me. I wasn’t expecting it.’</p><p>‘Constant Vigilance’ is the expected response, and it makes Remus snort. And then she’s laughing into her shoulder, and she’s still laughing when Pomfrey arrives and they lay her down on the floor.</p><p>She can feel Moody’s eye on her, but it’s not his magic eye just his normal one, so that’s ok.</p><p>————</p><p>Lupin looks like shit.</p><p>That, in itself, is not completely unusual. Lupin regularly looks like shit, it feels like she’s spent most of the last decade tucked up on his sofa hunched over a cup of tea pale and wan. But it’s been a long time since Moody’s seen her look so horribly frail and injured.</p><p>Pomfrey patches her up well enough, and they’ve called the aurors. Those on call are not Moody’s closest companions - he gathers from Lupin they’d been out drinking this evening - and that is something of a relief. He can take the time to compose himself before facing them.</p><p>Merlin’s fucking beard. </p><p>Galloway pitches up at quarter to two, with several junior aurors in tow, and they arrest Crouch. Take him back to Azkaban where should have been. Where he should have died, and there had better be a bloody investigation as to how he got out. </p><p>Moody is currently, by both Dumbledore’s and Pomfrey’s insistence, in the hospital wing. He’s not lying in bed, unlike Lupin who is stretched out on the bed opposite, entirely prone, he’s sat up by the little side table with a glass of water trying to clean his eye.</p><p>‘Fucks sake’ he mutters, when it almost slips from his grasp for the third time. The eye is probably clean now, really it doesn’t need more than a swill, but he can’t quite shake the feeling that it’s still dirty. He’s an old man. He’s allowed his eccentricities.</p><p>His hands don’t have the dexterity of youth, and the eye is particularly slippery, and he’s wary of crushing it, cost him an absolute fucking fortune it did, he can feel the deep hot anger growing in his stomach and in his chest. He’s not typically bad tempered, despite what people might think, but this anger is paralysing and his hands are shaking.</p><p>‘Here’ Lupin says softly, and she’s managed to sneak up on him for the first time in his life. The massive blind spot and her quiet nature means he jumps at her voice, and he has to turn his head entirely to the left to see her out of his right eye. It’s jarring, for a man used to 360 degree vision.</p><p>She sits gingerly on the side of the bed, and holds out a hand and takes the glass and the eye from him. Gently, so gently, she holds the eye cupped in the palm of her hand and he watches as she drips water from the glass onto it. Rotates the eye again and again and water drips onto the table, but she doesn’t stop. Over and over and around, gentle tips of the glass. Eventually, she stops and takes a soft handkerchief, silk by the looks of it, where the hell she got that he doesn’t know, but he watches as she dabs the eye with it, and then once she’s done that tips more water over it again and finally hands it back.</p><p>He can’t deny, something about her meticulous and careful handling that makes him feel a bit better. Moody takes the eye from her and doesn’t delay, shoves it back into his face.</p><p>It spins for a moment, settling, and he has a view of the whole hospital wing. He varies the depth, peers through the curtains, through the main door to the hallway outside, glances into Pomfrey’s office through the wall and finally settles both eyes on Lupin.</p><p>She looks even worse now.</p><p>His magic eye gives him a perspective that others don’t have, one he tries not to abuse around his closest, but he can’t not see her bruises. They may be healed on the surface, but the muscles are still damaged and he can see the shadow of broken capillaries around her left eye, the inside of her mouth, her shoulder.</p><p>‘Shit Remus’ he mutters, and despite everything she smiles.</p><p>‘My fault’ she echos what she’d said earlier, ‘I turned my back. We should get back into the habit of questions, checks, that sort of thing.’</p><p>‘Yeah. I did the same. Fucker got me over the summer.’</p><p>‘He told the aurors there was something in his dustbins’ she reveals, ‘Kingsley told me they were worried about your paranoia, when they pitched up at yours and found only you there. At least that’s when I assume he got you?’</p><p>‘I assume so. Had to keep me alive though, for the polyjuice. Small blessing.’</p><p>‘Huge blessing’ Lupin says firmly, ‘I’d much rather have you than not.’</p><p>‘I don’t understand what happened tonight though. Did he attack you?’</p><p>‘Of sorts’</p><p>‘He wouldn’t have wanted to blow his cover though?’</p><p>There’s a pause. Lupin looks away and he can see the blood pulsing in her neck. If he peers a bit closer he can see her veins and arteries expand. Her heart rate has increased. Nerves? Panic?</p><p>Lupin sighs, and tips her head back to look at the ceiling. When her gaze returns to him she smiles wryly.</p><p>‘I wanted to speak to you. We haven’t spoken properly in a long while, for reasons that are now obvious. I could see you - him - Crouch - were out of sorts so to make sure - you - were ok. I was going to offer lesson plans, do a handover that sort of thing. But, see, I’d been pushing you all night, trying to cheer you up. He - Crouch - obviously - he - he thought there was something to follow through on. He misjudged the nature of our relationship, and it wasn’t hard to realise something was very wrong from that point.’</p><p>Moody feels a chill slide down his spine.</p><p>He’d heard voices in the room when they’d got back. Hadn’t known it was Lupin, but he’d realised pretty quick that something was happening when spells started flying.</p><p>‘Misjudged our relationship’ he repeats slowly.</p><p>‘When I said I’d go back to the castle with him, he evidently expected something different.’</p><p>‘Something different.’</p><p>She hums in agreement and he closes his eyes for a moment.</p><p>‘Remus’ he says gently.</p><p>‘It’s ok. It’s not a bad thing really. Better we know now than find out in six months time.’</p><p>‘You know I wouldn’t -‘</p><p>‘I know’ she’s firm and she meets his eyes evenly. ‘I know.’</p><p>Moody can see exactly how it happened. Can see Lupin in his mind’s eye flipping her hair or winking at him, muttering dirty jokes under her breath or making an innuendo with wide innocent eyes. It’s why he likes her, on first glance she’s prim and proper, but on second she’s sarcastic and witty. She offers to sit in his lap pretty much every time they meet, he’s threatened to put her over his knee more than once.</p><p>He can see exactly how Crouch, with minimal knowledge of Lupin, no context for their relationship, would take this as evidence as something more. And, when they were alone, act on it.</p><p>And Lupin, with her guard down and back turned would have been completely taken by surprise.</p><p>Merlin.</p><p>It’s only a testament to her skills as a duellist and her survival instinct that the situation hadn’t been horrendously worse.</p><p>It’s this, above all else, that makes him feel sick. Lupin is, Moody can admit in his own mind, important. And he’s had plenty of time for introspection recently. He’s not had much else to do.</p><p>It’s an odd friendship admittedly. Lupin is above all else a survivor. And she’s kind, and gentle, sarcastic and clever, she has had the worst fucking luck. She’s important to him, in a way he’s never really articulated before, and this makes him so angry. And her placid face and gentle expression makes him even angrier.</p><p>‘It’s ok Moody’ she says and merlin she’s trying to comfort him.</p><p>Moody gets up, slowly, telegraphing his movements. Moves around the table, and sits next to Lupin on the bed, not too close. She shifts closer, and leans her head against his shoulder, gently. It’s the easiest thing in the world to tuck her closer, wrap his arm around her shoulders and pull her in until they’re tucked together.</p><p>It’s late. Almost 3am, and he’s exhausted and he bets she is too.</p><p>Lupin sighs. Deep and sad and Merlin it’s not ok, but it could be much worse.</p><p>‘It’s ok.’ She mutters into his shoulder.</p><p>He doesn’t say anything.</p><p>Pomfrey pops her head around the door half an hour later, and she smiles at them. Moody is fairly certain Lupin has dozed off against him, and he’ll be damned if he moves now.</p><p>They sit there until the sun slowly rises, and obviously talk has already started in the ministry because Shacklebolt and Tonks appear around 5:30. Shacklebolt impassive and tense, Tonks wide eyed and worried. Dumbledore appears shortly after that, and eventually Moody has to shake Lupin awake, gently prop her up and she’s sleepy and dazed but she’s not afraid.</p><p>Tough as nails Lupin is, Moody thinks, vaguely proud.</p><p>Tough as fucking nails.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody doesn’t go back to teaching straight away.</p><p>He heads back to his actual home, and checks his wards, reassures his paranoia that no one will get the jump on him in the same way again. Tonks and Shacklebolt come with him.</p><p>The students are told nothing, when he does eventually return, and if Professor Moody can’t quite recall all of their names then that’s not important - he’s taken a lot of curses in his time, he’s sure to be loosing his marbles sooner or later.</p><p>It only takes one lesson with the fourth year Gryffindors for Moody to see what Crouch must have seen - how Potter is wide eyed and yes, sceptical and suspicious, but still hopeful and whole. How starved he is for positive adult attention. How easy it would have been for Crouch to build that relationship over a year, to manoeuvre Potter like a chess piece. And in doing so, shatter Potter’s trust in adults for good. Moody will see that it doesn’t happen -his final favour to Potter’s grandfather who had once saved Moody’s life. A favour to Lupin too, of sorts.</p><p>When Dumbledore sends a cryptic message, several weeks later, that Moody understands to mean ‘things are going to shit, let’s bring the Order back’, Moody takes a swig from his expensive whiskey and sends back:</p><p>‘Lets.’</p><p>————</p><p>Lupin comes around two days later, with a chilli hot enough to strip paint from wood.</p><p>‘Good to see you,’ Moody barks, holding her close for a minute, and then diving into the chilli with gusto.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody takes one look at Black two weeks later, and thinks ‘absolutely fucking not.’</p><p>When he voices this to Lupin, whispered in her ear in the back seats of the court room, she purses her lips and says 'be nice.'</p><p>Later, following Black's acquittal and Pettigrew's conviction, Black offers his hand to Moody to shake.</p><p>Moody focuses both eyes on him. This boy, <em>this boy</em> pretending to be a man, who, with his pride and his arrogance, made such a hash of things that they’re still picking up the pieces twelve years later, and thinks <em>no</em>. He's gratified when Black drops his hand, and drops his shoulders slightly.</p><p>‘Congratulations,' Moody says gruffly, to make Lupin happy.</p><p>‘Thanks,’ Black says. He opens his mouth to say something else, but Moody turns away before he can speak.</p><p>Moody reaches out and, in a rare show of affection, he loops his arm around Lupin’s waist. She doesn’t even blink, leaning into him.</p><p>‘Drink?' he mutters in her ear, but loud enough for Black to hear.</p><p>‘God, I'd love one.’</p><p>‘Later, Black.’ He says, and they disaparate. He catches a glimpse of Black’s raised eyebrows before they vanish.</p><p>He buys them a round of beers, and when he sits down and takes a long gulp of the cold beer (that he tests three times before drinking) he feels more settled than he has in months.</p><p>Lupin's wry smile from across the table makes Moody grin in return. Moody feels vaguely optimistic.</p><p>Predictably, it doesn’t last.</p><p>————</p><p>‘Did you know?’ Moody asks, late one evening during the Christmas holidays, when the clouds are low and the rain lashes against the window panes.</p><p>Remus has come around for dinner (she’s come around to cook dinner, Moody mentally corrects, as he tucks in happily to her hearty stew), and it feels like old times. Back before things got so bloody complicated. Back before Crouch, or Black (or even Shacklebolt, Moody thinks uncharitably, and then reprimands himself slightly, because actually he does approve of their relationship), before the imminent return of Voldemort and the rise in extremist pure-blood supremacy.</p><p>Back when the biggest issues were Lupin’s unemployment and Moody’s insane colleagues. Normal problems. </p><p>Lupin sits opposite, tucking into her own plate, and looks up at him carefully.</p><p>‘Did I know what?’</p><p>Moody sends her an unimpressed look.</p><p>‘Don’t play dumb, it doesn't suit you. Did you know that a murderer and death eater was impersonating me? I guess not, if you’d left the party to be alone with him.’</p><p>Lupin nods, slowly. She’s thinking hard.</p><p>‘I didn’t - I didn’t know,’ she says, looking down, eyes focused on her fork. ‘But I knew something was wrong, and I ignored it. I thought that I was in the wrong. I should have listened to that instinct.’</p><p>‘Aye. You’ve got good instincts. Make sure to listen to your gut. It's saved your life before. You’re a survivor, you’ve made it this far.’</p><p>Lupin blushes, slightly, a pink flush on her cheekbones and he watches on with amusement.</p><p>There’s a pause, and then:</p><p>‘He ignored me,’ she says, finally looking up into his face. Moody can’t quite parse the expression on her face. ‘He ignored my letters, didn’t take my floo calls. I thought you were - I thought you were angry at me, or - or disappointed in me, because of everything. Me keeping secrets about Sirius.’</p><p>The amusement dies in his gut.</p><p>‘He kept sending red sparks,' she goes on, and Moody gets the impression that if she stops talking, she won't start again, so her words are quick, spilling out of her, running into each other. ‘Red sparks for 'everything's fine' and I knew everything <em>wasn't</em> fine, but I thought it was me. I didn’t think that the problem could be you. So I didn't notice that he was an imposter. I’m sorry.'</p><p>‘I’m not disappointed in you,’ Moody says, because that's the easiest thing to address. ‘I'm not angry or disappointed. I'd tell you if I was.'</p><p>Lupin laughs, in spite of herself. ‘I guess that’s true,’ she says with a small smile.</p><p>‘Aye, I would. We’ve not made it this far for me to start pulling my punches now. I understand why you didn’t say about Black. I don’t agree, I think you made a mistake, but you can't deny it's worked out. And I understand. So stop fretting, eh?'</p><p>Moody thinks, for a second, he should ignore the tears welling in Lupin's eyes. Pretend not to see them, and give her a second of privacy to compose herself. And then he reconsiders. After all, he’s seen much worse than Lupin's tears.</p><p>‘Come on lass,’ he murmurs, low and soft, and reaches out across the table to hold her hand.</p><p>Lupin smiles.</p><p>‘Thank you.'</p><p>‘Besides,’ he says, trying to lighten the mood, ‘who else would put up with my bitching?’</p><p>Lupin swallows a mouthful of stew, and uses a slice of bread to wipe up the last of the gravy. </p><p>‘I hear that Amelia Bones has quite the crush on you. I'm offended that you didn't tell me about your blossoming romance.’</p><p>Moody’s going to kill Shacklebolt.</p><p>————</p><p>Later that evening, when the clock has gone midnight, and Lupin is getting ready for bed, she comes over and kisses him goodnight, a gentle press of lips to his cheek.</p><p>Moody wonders if this time around is going to be worse - he feels like he has more to loose in his old age. Wonders if Dumbledore has the same problem.</p><p>————</p><p>'Moody seems sweet on you,’ Sirius says, nonchalant, over a cup of coffee.</p><p>They've met in a muggle coffee shop, a neutral non-magical place, to catch up and start rebuilding their -</p><p><em>Friendship</em>, Remus thinks resolute. Friendship only.</p><p>‘Moody? Well, we're old friends now,’ she says.</p><p>Sirius raises his eyebrows, and purses his lips in a way that suggests he thinks she's not telling the truth.</p><p>‘What?’ Remus snaps.</p><p>‘I dunno, it's just a bit weird isn't it. He's a lot older than you.'</p><p>The anger that hits Remus is blinding and she’s momentarily speechless. She's forgotten how cutting Sirius can be.</p><p>‘No.' She says cold, and something in her tone makes Sirius' eyes snap up to meet hers. ‘It's not weird. Moody has done a lot for me. We've been friends a long time now. He probably saved my life.’</p><p>‘I reckon he fancies you,' Sirius says, because god forbid that Sirius leave things before he puts his foot in it. He's never known when to leave enough alone.</p><p>Remus stands, and pushes his shoulder, hard. Enough that he jolts his coffee and spills it over the table. He's surprised.</p><p>‘Fuck you Sirius. Grow up.'</p><p>It’s a cruel thing to say, because of course Sirius hasn't grown up. He's been locked behind bars with his nightmares for twelve years, but Remus isn't always a good person, and she's borne enough for his mistakes.</p><p>Remus doesn't look back, just grabs her coat and leaves, storming down the street. She doesn't look back, and she doesn't know if Sirius follows.</p><p>Remus stews in her annoyance for a couple of days, until Kingsley speculates that maybe Sirius was trying to get a rise out of her, because it's clear that she has a life that he's not part of.</p><p>She has a life, and he doesn’t.</p><p>He's probably right, and Remus mellows. She sends an owl to Sirius with an apology, and gets an apology in return.</p><p>————</p><p>Winter fades to spring. Remus gets rejected for four more jobs, and endures more full moons.</p><p>She gets a stressed floo from Moody in late spring, and he doesn't quite ask for help with marking or setting exams, but when Remus offers he accepts with an enthusiasm that surprises her.</p><p>So Remus spends several weeks working behind the scenes, marking his essays and pulling lesson plans for him, and next time she sees Moody he looks much happier - or as happy as Moody ever does.</p><p>Harry writes an excellent essay on the use of severing and cutting charms against dark creatures, and Remus has no hesitation in giving him an ‘O’. She leaves a kind comment, and she wonders if he’ll recognise her writing.</p><p>Moody tells her a week later that he did.</p><p>Things are fine.</p><p>————</p><p>It goes on like this until early summer, until Remus gets a patronus at three in the morning. It’s Dumbledore’s phoenix.</p><p>
  <em>Voldemort has risen. The Order of the Phoenix must return.</em>
</p><p>She sits in 12 Grimmauld Place, between Moody and Kingsley, opposite Sirius and thinks ‘here we go again.’</p><p>Moody squeezes her hand.</p><p>————</p><p>To Be Continued.</p><p>————</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Only Way Out Is Through</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Moody’s worried, Remus knows. But for now, there’s not much she can do about it. She can see it, clearly, written in the lines on his face, and the way they seem deeper and darker than they ever were. </p><p>But Remus thinks it’s fine, there’s no need for Moody to worry. She’s got everything under control. </p><p>(Inevitably, she does not have everything under control.)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A/N - phew! This was a marathon. I can’t believe it’s finished! This chapter is so much longer than I thought it would be, but we’re here, we’re done, everything tied up and happy endings for everyone. You get have a happy ending! You get happy ending! You died in canon? You get a happy ending! </p><p>More seriously - this chapter is, eh, maybe a bit darker than I intended, but it’s consistent with the rest of this fic and canon. Some nasty things happen in the later books, and I feel like Bellatrix Lestrange comes with her own warning. Most of the violence happens ‘off screen’ so to speak, and it’s not that explicit, but if that’s something you’re sensitive too, be careful. There are also references to sexual content - only between Remus and Kingsley in the context of their relationship, and nothing explicit - and if anything it’s much more positive than the references in chapter 1, but again please keep yourself safe. </p><p>Finally, I hope you enjoy! This is one of those passion pieces for me, a concept I’ve had in my head for over a year now and I’m so pleased that it’s finished. If you’ve read this far, thank you so much. </p><p>Without further ado, enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>————</p><p>
  <em>And now the wind's getting colder and the night's getting cruel</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But I don't mind, I don't mind if I'm with you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I paid for my sins 'til the blood filled the room</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But I don't feel any better now</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I don't mind if I'm with you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘I don’t mind if I’m with you’ by Brian Fallon</em>
</p><p>
  <em>————</em>
</p><p>There are dark clouds hanging low in the sky, and rain starts to fall. It’s October, and freezing cold.</p><p><em>Great, </em>Remus thinks.<em> As if this whole situation couldn’t get any fucking worse.</em></p><p>The Isle of Skye is beautiful. All dramatic scenery and dense, lush forests. It would be a lovely spot for a holiday, Remus thinks idly. She thinks wistfully of hot chocolate and warm jumpers, and tries to ignore the sour taste of bile in the back of her mouth.</p><p>Instead of the quiet peaceful weekend Remus has invented in her mind, she’s stripped half naked, in a rocky cave system on the beach, with twenty werewolves waiting for the full moon to rise.</p><p>Waiting, in particular, to see if deatheater sympathisers show up to try and radicalise this group. It’s one of the largest werewolf packs in the country.</p><p>And Remus has a sore ache in the bottom of her gut, because she knows exactly who the deatheaters will send to try and negotiate with the pack.</p><p>He might not even recognise her.</p><p>Yeah, yeah.</p><p>
  <em>And pigs fly without magical intervention.</em>
</p><p>Remus just hopes he doesn’t show up.</p><p>—————</p><p>He does.</p><p>Of course.</p><p>Remus sucks in a deep breath and comes face to face with Frenir Greyback for the first time in decades.</p><p>He’s <em>vile</em>. Even in his human body, his face is twisted in a sort of snout, and his rippling muscles are scattered with scars and wounds.</p><p>Remus doesn’t flinch. Resolutely doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink, just meets his eyes and keeps her hands by her sides, shoulders back and chin up.</p><p>A slow grin sneaks across is his.</p><p>‘Well, well,’ he drawls, ‘Alice.’</p><p>The way he twists Remus’ name around his mouth makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.</p><p>‘Remus,’ she says anyway, ‘Remus Lupin, nowadays.’</p><p>Greyback laughs, and a few others snigger. Remus lets a smirk twist her lips. It <em>is</em> funny. It’s a joke, and one that everyone here gets. </p><p>Greyback struts forward, and Remus watches closely as he leans in and smells her neck. He presses his face close to her cheek. His breath is rank, and his nostrils flare. Remus grits her teeth, hard, until she feels her jaw creak, but she carefully, painfully, keeps her face impassive.</p><p>‘Remus,’ he drawls.</p><p>They gaze at each other for a moment, and it could be intimate. If it were Kingsley and they were tucked under the blue duvet in his London flat, it would be unbearably intimate.</p><p>But this, this is a fight for dominance, and Remus has a jolt of sick victory when Greyback blinks first and looks away.</p><p>‘Come on then,’ and he waves her forward with the rest of the pack.</p><p>Remus breathes a sigh of relief. First test passed.</p><p>—————</p><p>Moody watches the full moon rise in the sky, and frowns.</p><p>He’s loitering awkwardly at the corner of Knockturn Alley, and Charing Cross. Tonks is further down the street, her hair grey and back bent double in the guise of an old lady, gazing into a shop window. Kingsley is here somewhere too, but Moody can’t see him.</p><p>They’ve had a tip off that Yaxley is closing a deal, unclear what, just that it’s something valuable and, hopefully, incriminating. So they’re here in the middle of the fucking night, waiting.</p><p>Another glance at the sky.</p><p>The moon is high and whole, and Moody purses his lips, a stab of worry in his chest.</p><p>He doesn’t have time to dwell then, because there’s a flicker of movement at the end of the street, and Kingsley appears from around the corner, waving them forward.</p><p>Moody takes a breath and turns his attention to the task at hand. He resolutely pushes away all thoughts of Lupin. Only a fool lets himself be distracted in battle.</p><p>Distraction means death.</p><p>————</p><p>Moony howls at the moon. Throws her head back and when the alpha wolf snaps at her heels, she bites him, hard, until he bleeds.</p><p>Remus wakes four hours later, drags herself upright and ignores her aching muscles. She doesn’t loiter, and apparates away.</p><p>————</p><p>It’s hard to say who looks worse for wear, when they all regroup in Grimmauld Place the morning after. Truth be told, they’re all in a bit of a state.</p><p>Molly Weasley fusses, making tea and frying bacon. She keep throwing glances over her shoulder at the rest of them sat at the table.</p><p>Lupin sits, huddled in a thick jumper, a blue black bruise growing around her left eye, her wrist splinted.</p><p>Tonks has her head tilted forward, trying to stem the bleeding from her nose, Shacklebolt with his leg up, ice on his ankle. Moody has his head tilted back. Hestia Jones is trying to re-attach his front teeth. Yaxley got away and Amelia is going to kill him. Moody sighs.</p><p>‘Merlin,’ Black says, as he turns the corner and comes into the kitchen. ‘What the fuck happened?’</p><p>‘Occupational hazard,’ Tonks mutters into her handkerchief, and Lupin snorts and nearly inhales her tea.</p><p>‘What-‘</p><p>‘Just leave it Black,’ Shacklebolt says, not unkind but firm. He raises a hand and presses his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, head tilted back, as if warding off a headache.</p><p>Lupin looks up at him, and reaches over and puts a hand on his leg. Through the table, Moody can see her stroking Shacklebolt’s knee with her thumb, and that little bit of intimacy makes his mouth twitch. It’s sweet.</p><p>Black nods, slowly, and takes a seat at the end of the table.</p><p>Moody grunts, as his teeth ping back into place, and Hestia gives them a little tap with her nail.</p><p>‘There you go, good as new.’</p><p>‘Cheers,’ Moody mutters, feeling them with his tongue.</p><p>‘Aye.’</p><p>Moody catches Lupin’s eye. She looks tired, but pensive. He can almost hear her thoughts rattling around her head.</p><p>Not that he has any clue about what they may be. He hasn’t seen her for weeks now, and truth be told he feels a bit out of touch.</p><p>This is how it starts, he thinks grimly, twisting his mouth and biting his tongue. After all, they’ve been here before.</p><p>Moody catches Lupin’s eye, and he half raises an eyebrow. She glances to her left, where Black is still watching, teeth clenched.</p><p>A quick move of her lips, hidden behind her hand, for Moody’s eye only.</p><p>
  <em>Later.</em>
</p><p>And then Molly brings around a plate of bacon sarnies, and Moody lets himself be distracted.</p><p>———-</p><p>Later doesn’t come until almost a week passes, when Moody wanders into the dining room in Grimmauld place close to three in the morning, and finds Lupin nursing a cup of tea. He wonders if she’s waiting for him.</p><p>He’s just finished a night shift, (as a favour to Amelia, even though he’s bloody <em>retired</em>) and his leg hurts something awful. He grunts as he sits down opposite, and after a quick glance around around the house, he can see that everyone else is safely asleep and unlikely to bother them (bar Black who’s sat on the end of Potter’s bed, face solemn).</p><p>Moody reaches down and unbuckles his fake leg. He sighs as he sets it aside.</p><p>‘Fuck me,’ he mutters, rubbing the end of his leg with his thumbs.</p><p>‘Alright?’ Lupin says, soft, and turns her eyes to him. She’s haggard, looking thin with deep bags under her eyes, but her smile is fond.</p><p>‘Aye,’ he says, matching her tone. ‘Amelia Bones is a tyrant.’</p><p>Lupin snorts.</p><p>‘Do you want a cuppa?’ she says, ‘Making another one.’</p><p>‘Aye, go on then.’</p><p>Moody watches closely, without resorting to his roaming eye, as Lupin gets up and fusses with the kettle for a minute. She’s stood fully upright, and when she brings the mugs to the table her hands are steady.</p><p>Moody’s glad. The last full moon looked brutal.</p><p>‘Go on then.’ Moody says, once she’s settled back.</p><p>Lupin looks up with raised eyebrows.</p><p>‘Go on,’ he says again, ‘what’s going on in that head of yours. You’ve been thinking about something for a week now, but I’m not a goddamn mind reader. And I have a right to know what’s going to come and bite me in the arse, don’t I?’</p><p>Lupin has the grace to look bashful.</p><p>‘You know me too well,’ she mutters into her mug, and Moody mutters an ‘aye’ under his breath. He’s struck, for a moment, how true that statement is.</p><p>‘It’s Greyback,’ she says, and she watches him closely for his reaction. ‘You know of him?’</p><p>‘Course.’ Greyback is a nasty piece of work. A muggle man, bitten young. He’s singlehandedly responsible for inflecting over fifty adults in Britain over the last two decades. He’s wanted by the ministry, but somehow they’ve never managed to pin him down. Figure that one out, Moody thinks grimly. ‘Go on.’</p><p>Lupin blinks for a moment, and narrows her eyes slightly. Evidently he hasn’t given her the reaction she was expecting.</p><p>‘He turned up at the pack last week, he’s been recruiting for you-know-who.’</p><p>Moody nods. This isn’t news. They’ve long suspected that Greyback is Voldemort’s werewolf. Lupin is still watching, and Moody wonders what he’s missing.</p><p>‘He’s the one who bit me,’ she says, apropos to nothing. ‘He knows me.’</p><p><em>That’s </em>the context he’s missing. Moody’s heart jumps a beat.</p><p>‘What?’ he says lowly, and Lupin relaxes. ‘Fuck, did he recognise you?’</p><p>‘Of course he did,’ she takes a long slurp of her tea. ‘He knew me immediately. Called me A- by my real name,’ and she glances down the dining room to the door. ‘I’m Dumbledore’s pet werewolf after all.’</p><p>Moody purses his lips. On one hand, he knows Lupin can handle it. She’s proven herself more than once. On the other -</p><p>‘That’s dangerous,’ he says, nonchalant. Lupin knows him too well though, and she gives him a small grin.</p><p>‘Don’t worry about me,’ she says, draining her mug. ‘I can handle it.’</p><p>‘So what’s the issue?’ he asks.</p><p>She takes the empty mugs back to the side, and when she comes back she goes to sit in her chair, but her eyes do a double take, and she sits down next to Moody instead.</p><p>She moves his fake leg, from where its propped against the table. Moody usually doesn’t like people touching his leg, but Lupin’s hand on it is bearable.</p><p>‘I don’t think I’ll be able to persuade them,’ she says slowly. ‘I can’t compete with the promises that he’s making. I’m promising the status quo; he’s promising them freedom. Equality. I feel like - I’ll fail again.’</p><p>‘You don’t have to persuade them to join Dumbledore,’ Moody says, touching her hand gently. ‘You just have to persuade them not to join Voldemort.’</p><p>Lupin hums in agreement.</p><p>‘You know I’ve never seen you without your leg on before,’ she mutters, ‘not properly,’ and Moody racks his brain for a moment and thinks, yes, she’s probably right. He doesn’t take it off that often - the fiasco with Crouch aside.</p><p>Moody shrugs.</p><p>‘Does it hurt?’ she asks.</p><p>If it were anyone else he’d tell them to fuck off. He’d pull his leg on, and stomp away. But it’s not some random-er, someone looking to gain info or advantage on him. It’s Lupin.</p><p>‘Aye,’ he saws lowly, matching her tone. ‘Hurts like a bitch. I’m getting old.’</p><p>Lupin’s mouth twitches, and she shifts closer. Rests her head on his shoulder for a moment, and puts her hand on his knee.</p><p>‘Be careful,’ he whispers into her ear, pressing a kiss to the side of her head.</p><p>‘Aye,’ she says, mocking.</p><p>He flicks her, where he just kissed her and she laughs, loud and bright in the dingy kitchen.</p><p>‘Go the fuck to bed,’ she calls over her shoulder as she leaves the room.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody’s worried, Remus knows. But for now, there’s not much she can do about it. She can see it, clearly, written in the lines on his face, and the way they seem deeper and darker than they ever were.</p><p>They don’t have too much time together anymore, between his day job with Amelia, and his order missions. Between the work she’s doing with Sirius, work for Dumbledore and the pack. There’s barely any time left. She hardly sees Kingsley anymore, and they live together. She sees him in the morning, when he brings her a cup of tea before he leaves for work, and kisses her goodbye.</p><p>Other than that, there’s nothing. </p><p>And Remus thinks it’s fine, that there’s no need for Moody to worry. She’s got everything under control.</p><p>————-</p><p>Inevitably, Remus does not have everything under control.</p><p>————-</p><p>The weeks pass quickly and before she knows it, the full moon is upon them again. The full moon in December falls exactly a week before Christmas.</p><p>Remus returns to the Isle of Skye, and joins the pack as she has the last several moons.</p><p>A woman called Krissy greets her. A young muggle, with long dark hair and hungry eyes. Her hands are thin and frail as they hold Remus’ fingers, and Remus squeezes back. But she smiles sweetly.</p><p>Greyback turns up, moments before the moon rises, just as Remus had thought not to expect him.</p><p>He grins and snarls, and then they’re all gone.</p><p>————-</p><p>Remus comes back to herself. It’s early morning. She’s sprawled on the floor, naked, and with a sigh and shaking arms, she pushes herself up. Her wand is still secured to her forearm. Safe in the holster Moody had made for her. It was a gift for her birthday this year.</p><p><em>Thank Merlin, </em>she thinks.</p><p>A summoning charm brings her clothes to her, and she’s just managed to pull on her jumper and jeans, when Greyback appears through the trees.</p><p>For once he’s not looking for the pack, his shoulders are drawn down and he glances sheepishly over his shoulder. That alone sparks Remus’ interest, and she drops into a duck, ignoring the pull of her muscles.</p><p>With a glance around, and a quick tracking spell, Remus follows him, ducking in and out of the trees.</p><p>————</p><p>Nearly three miles later, and Remus is out of breath and shaking from exertion. The sun is rising high, she estimates it must be around midday now. Greyback finally comes to a stop.</p><p>It’s a small clearing, and he stops in the middle of it.</p><p>Remus isn’t too surprised, when Yaxley and Dolohov appear. They’re decked out in full deatheater garb, and Remus inches closer straining to hear.</p><p>‘That’s not good enough Greyback,’ Dolohov sneers, and his squares up to Greyback, both of them gearing for a fight.</p><p>‘Well, your boss seems to think it’s fine, so fuck off,’ Greyback says back.</p><p>‘We need the pack confirmed.’</p><p>‘I need more time.’</p><p><em>Interesting. </em>So Voldemort doesn’t think the pack is a done deal. That gives Remus a bit of hope.</p><p>Wands are drawn.</p><p>‘There is no more time,’ Yaxley snarls. ‘We’re ready to move soon, and we need back up. The Dark Lord needs it.’</p><p>‘Needs what?’ Greyback snarls, and he launches forward, using his considerable height and breadth to intimidate Yaxley.</p><p>Both Yaxley and Dolohov jump back, and a stray stunner flies and hits a tree just to Remus’ right.</p><p>‘None of your business,’ Dolohov snarls. ‘Just know the Dark Lord needs it, and it’s in the ministry.’</p><p>‘You listen to me you fucking half breed-‘</p><p>Remus leans forward, and when she puts her weight on her hand resting on the floor, a branch under her palm snaps.</p><p>She closes her eyes.</p><p>
  <em>Merlin.</em>
</p><p>They all spin around, wands pointing in her direction.</p><p>———-</p><p>The fight is over quickly. Remus is saved, bizarrely, by Greyback.</p><p>Remus draws her wand and send back a curse at Dolohov. She’s incredibly aware that she’s outnumbered three to one, not the worst odds she’s ever faced, but <em>god </em>she’s not 21 anymore, when Greyback turns and whatever personal battle he has with Yaxley, he chooses this moment to act on it.</p><p>He lunges for Yaxley, who’s not guarding his left side, and they fall heavily to the ground. Dolohov is distracted for a moment, so Remus gets in a good shot.</p><p>Yaxley sends a hex her way, but Remus manages to duck out of the way. Dolohov curses Greyback, the spell bounces off.</p><p>Remus contemplates making a run for it, when suddenly, there’s a hand around her throat. Remus bucks, and thrashes but the hand is steadfast and unmoving.</p><p>
  <em>How could someone have snuck up on her? How did she not hear them?</em>
</p><p>She looses her wand, and claws at the hand at her throat. It’s cold to the touch, metal maybe, or glass, and just as strong. She throws her head back, trying to catch the person in the face. Being caught on the nose hurts like a bitch, and she thinks if she can just get them to shift their grip a little …</p><p>But there’s no one there. It’s like this is a disembodied hand. If she couldn’t feel the ghost of an arm against her shoulder, she would have thought the hand wasn’t connected to anyone. </p><p>Remus thrashes, her magic flowing around her, as she struggles to breath.</p><p>She can see the battle in front of her, detached from the peril she’s suddenly found herself in.</p><p>Remus writhes, but the world is growing dim and her vision is clouding.</p><p>‘I could do it,’ a voice whispers, near her ear. Remus’ heart jumps, and it has nothing to do with the lack of oxygen in her body. ‘They’ve told me to do it, and I could.’</p><p>The hand grips tighter, Remus chokes. Greyback mauls Yaxley, and they fall back to the ground in a shower of blood.</p><p>Remus fights physically, as much as she can, but she doesn’t plead. Resolutely doesn’t beg. She’s not going to die like that.</p><p>Remus’ eyes roll, and she knows nothing more.</p><p>———-</p><p>Moody is at home, minding his own business when the call comes.</p><p>Tonks’ boar patronus lights up his front room.</p><p><em>Arthur’s been attacked, </em>she says, <em>department of mysteries not secure.</em></p><p>———-</p><p>Moody is part of the squad that gets to Arthur first.</p><p>When he gets there, Arthur is sprawled on the floor, and the amount of blood pouring out of him is shocking. Moody’s seen a lot of gore in his life, but honestly this is up there. It’s a miracle that Arthur’s not dead already. Moody drops to his knees, but no matter what spells he casts the blood doesn’t stop.</p><p>‘Fuck, fucking, fuck,’ Tonks mutters, as she packs the wound with her jumper.</p><p>‘The snake,’ Arthur gasps, ‘it was - Snake.’</p><p>Moody’s eye swings around, full 360 vision, and he studies carefully the inside of the hall of prophecy, down the corridors. Nothing.</p><p>‘It’s gone Arthur,’ he says, ‘it’s done now.’</p><p>Kingsley comes running, and they heave Arthur up and out before anyone else can find them.</p><p>‘I’ll stay,’ Tonks hisses, ‘I’ll watch it.’</p><p>Kingsley nods. </p><p>————</p><p>Moody spends the next twelve hours in the ministry, falsifying papers and covering up for Arthur.</p><p>He fakes staff rotas, and goes up to Arthur’s office and creates an alibi for him. The Weasleys’ poverty is well known - Arthur doing overtime in the run up to Christmas shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows.</p><p>There’s a particularly hairy moment, when Fudge comes nosing, and Moody’s caught where he shouldn’t really be, but Amelia tells an outright lie to cover for them.</p><p>She doesn’t know what they’re doing, and she doesn’t know any details, but when she meets Moody’s eye there’s a loyalty there.</p><p>Afterwards, he mutters ‘cheers Amelia,’ into her ear.</p><p>He turns to leave, but Amelia grabs his sleeve and brings him back.</p><p>‘Tell me,’ she whispers, ‘if there’s anything I can do.’</p><p>She’s not in the order. She won’t bow to Dumbledore, he knows. The ministerial democracy runs too deep in her. She won’t be part of a vigilante group. It’s a damn shame, they could use her.</p><p>‘I will,’ he says, and he means it.</p><p>———-</p><p>Its nearly seventy two hours before Moody sits down, and has a moment to himself.</p><p>‘How’s Lupin?’ he asks Kingsley, when he wonders into the kitchen, an obscenely large cup of coffee in his hand. ’The full go ok?’</p><p>Kingsley blinks, slowly.</p><p>‘I haven’t seen her yet. She’s not - She’s not at mine. I thought she must have gone to yours.’</p><p>That’s when they realise. </p><p>————-</p><p>It’s a race then.</p><p>They visit all the places Lupin might be - her home in Wales, Moody’s house, Kingsley’s flat, the shrieking shack, even the fucking holding cells in the ministry. But nothing.</p><p>Moody doesn’t worry very often, no matter what Lupin might think, but he’s worried now.</p><p>They know she spent the full moon with the pack, but they can’t go up there. Any aurors spotted sneaking around could compromise Lupin. Except if they don’t go up there, she could already be compromised.</p><p>Moody’s not used to feeling helpless, but he does now.</p><p>————</p><p>The world comes into focus slowly.</p><p>Remus blinks. Her mouth is dry, and her neck is twisted, and for a terrifyingly long moment Remus thinks she can’t move. She takes several deep breathes. In and out slowly, and listens to the sounds around her. It’s all silent.</p><p>Slowly, so fucking slowly, Remus twists her body around and heaves herself up.</p><p>She nearly retches, when she glances to the side and sees Greyback’s body.</p><p>Or rather, what’s left of the body.</p><p>Yaxley too, is sprawled on the other side. From the angle of his neck, he’s dead. Dolohov is nowhere to be seen. There’s no evidence of the hand that strangled her, nor the person it’s attached to. Remus feels a shiver down her spine.</p><p>He could have done it, but he didn’t and she doesn’t quite know what that means.</p><p>The sun is low in the sky, setting, and Remus has no idea what time it is, or even what day it is. Or even, how she’s alive.</p><p>
  <em>Merlin.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>———— </em>
</p><p>When the aurors arrive, Remus assumes on the call of Dolohov, who seems to be the only one who got out of this unscathed, Remus doesn’t put up much of a fight.</p><p>She physically can’t.</p><p>She half hopes that Kingsley or Tonks will be part of the group, but she can only look into the faces of strangers, as they haul her up and tie her hands.</p><p>————-</p><p>Moody gets an owl from Amelia at three the following morning, just as he’s sent Shacklebolt to bed.</p><p>
  <em>Your werewolf friend has been arrested. They’ve got her in holding.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>————</em>
</p><p>The guards on holding cells aren’t happy about letting him in, but Moody isn’t a green little fucker, and he doesn’t let them stop him.</p><p>A ten minute lecture on respecting authorities, a dash of constant vigilance and a snide ‘get out of my way’, and they move. All the while, Moody is very conscious that Lupin is at the mercy of a system that is designed to hurt her.</p><p>Moody bullies his way in, leaving Tonks and Shacklebolt by the door.</p><p>————</p><p>The holding cells are a hell of their own. Moody has always thought so. Long corridors, bars, bleak brick and exposed lights. They’ve got Lupin in the furthest one - for magical creatures - and Moody steels himself, sets his face and barges in.</p><p>Lupin has her back to the door, arms drawn back around the chair and shackled. He looks closely, and can see by her slowly blistering wrists that they’re using silver shackles.</p><p>‘This is a private investigation,’ the auror in charge snaps, Flint maybe, or Flex. Something stupid.</p><p>‘Amelia’s orders,’ he grunts, loud, and plants himself against the closed door arms crossed. It’s a lie, but he thinks Amelia won’t mind. She’s still the boss after all.</p><p>He doesn’t miss the way Lupin’s shoulders twitch at his voice.</p><p>‘Here,’ the woman - Selwyn, Moody thinks, he really should be better at names - and she forces a glass of water with what Moody assumes is veriterserum down Lupin’s throat before he can speak up.</p><p>‘Name?’ Flint says, sitting opposite Lupin and pulling out a quill.</p><p>‘Remus Lupin.’ Moody winces. Her voice is wrecked. He can see bruising on her throat. Someone has tried to strangle her.</p><p>‘That’s the name you’re registered under?’</p><p>Lupin shifts, and when Moody drops his eye to her hands, he can see she’s doing <em>something. </em>She’s got what looks like a hair pin - the thin ones that he find scattered around his carpet or bathroom after she’s stayed around - gripped in her fist, and she’s rolling it between her fingers.</p><p>‘No,’ she says after a pause, and he can see her flexing her jaw. ‘I’m registered under Alice Munsten.’</p><p>Flint jots it down.</p><p>‘Is this your wand?’ And he pulls out what Moody knows to be Lupin’s wand. He recognises the apple tree handle, the scratches and genera wear and tear. He’s seen it a hundred times, left on the sideboard or on his coffee table. It’s definitely, 100%, without any shadow of a doubt, Lupin’s wand.</p><p>‘No,’ she says.</p><p>Moody blinks, and keeps his face very carefully twisted into a scowl.</p><p>
  <em>What?</em>
</p><p>‘That’s not my wand,’ she says, and her jaw flexes again and her fingers twist behind her back, invisible to all but him.</p><p>Flint seems surprised too.</p><p>‘You’re certain?’ He presses.</p><p>‘That’s not my wand,’ another flex and another twitch of fingers.</p><p>‘Fine. You were found at the scene of the murder of two people. Anton Dolohov and Fenrir Greyback. Did you kill them?’</p><p>Lupin’s hand spasms sharply, but her voice is steady when she says ‘no.’</p><p>‘Do you know who did?’</p><p>‘No.’</p><p>A drop of blood drips from Lupin’s clenched fists. Moody twitches his fingers where they’re hidden in the crook of his elbow, and vanishes it before it hits the floor.</p><p>Lupin draws in a ragged breath.</p><p>‘Do you know whose wand this is?’</p><p>‘No.’</p><p>‘Did you cast the last spells cast from this wand?’</p><p>‘No.’</p><p>Flint sighs, and sits back frustrated.</p><p>‘Why were you with the pack on the Isle of Skye?’</p><p>Lupin flinches, and shifts her shoulders. Her knuckles are white and her fingers are bloody.</p><p>‘Problem?’ Flint says, raising his eyebrows.</p><p>‘No. The silver handcuffs hurt. I was with the pack on the Isle of Skye because I transform with them sometimes. Some of the girls are - kind - to me,’ She’s gasping, shallow breathes. ‘I like them. It’s easier to transform outside. Hurts less.’</p><p>‘Did you know that Greyback was going to be there?’</p><p>‘I suspected he would. I don’t like him but he -‘ She breaks off.</p><p>‘But he?’ Flint prompts.</p><p>‘He thinks that he’s protecting the pack. From the ministry. From those who would hurt us. Sometimes I need that too.’</p><p>Lupin’s voice is strangled.</p><p>‘Are you working for someone? Dumbledore, maybe?’</p><p>Moody can feel his pulse rising, and the vein in his temple throbbing. He doesn’t know how she’s doing this, but:</p><p>‘No.’ It’s barely a word, more a croak of air, but it’s enough.</p><p>Flint sits back and throws his quill down. He gazes at Lupin for a long moment.</p><p>‘Do you have <em>anything </em>useful to tell me?’ he spits. It’s a snide, unfair question.</p><p>Lupin answers anyway.</p><p>‘Yaxley has been selling something to the pack. I don’t know what. But I saw an exchange.’</p><p>There’s pause.</p><p>‘Fine,’ Flint snaps. He gets to his feet, and storms out. ‘Finish this off,’ he snaps at Moody as he passes.</p><p>Moody doesn’t move.</p><p>‘The key,’ he grunts, and holds out his hand.</p><p>Flint thrusts it at him, and then they both leave the room. Selwyn hands over the paperwork, sheepishly, and follows on Flint’s heels.</p><p>He waits a moment, until the door closes, and Lupin slumps forward a bit. She lets out a pained sound.</p><p>‘Alright,’ Moody says, pitched low. He reaches out and puts his hand on Lupin’s shoulder. She’s drawn tight.</p><p>It takes a long moment, before he fits the key into the lock but the shackles come off in his hand.</p><p>He eases her arms forward, rubbing her shoulders. Her hands are shaking and when she opens her hands, there’s a needle resting on her palm. Her middle and index fingers are pox marked with needle wounds.</p><p>‘Come on,’ he says, and he helps her up with a hand under her arm.</p><p>————</p><p>Shacklebolt’s eyes are intense on them, as Moody hustles Lupin down the floor plan.</p><p>‘Here,’ he mutters, ‘take care of that for me,’ as Moody chucks the paperwork in Shacklebolt’s hands.</p><p>Shacklebolt grunts in agreement, and his fingers brush Lupins for a split second, touches her cheek, before they’re gone.</p><p>————</p><p>He should take her to Grimmauld place, but fuck that.</p><p>He gets them home to his cottage, and his heart doesn’t slow until he’s sat Lupin at his dining table, and wrapped and healed her wounds. </p><p>Lupin leans against him, and hugs heavy arms around his shoulders, pressing her face into his shoulder. Moody lets her.</p><p>————</p><p>He puts her to bed. He’ll get no sense from her until she’s slept.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus doesn’t come back to sense, until long after Moody has tucked the duvet around her. He’s brought a cup of tea, in her favourite mug, a white china one with purple flowers. It’s sat on the edge of the bedside table, and when Remus reaches for it somehow Moody is there helping her unsteady hands.</p><p>She dozes for a bit, and wakes slightly when Kingsley climbs into bed. With his arms around her, holding her close, and his warm chest under her palm, Remus sleeps.</p><p>————</p><p>Remus hides out for nearly two days, before she feels well enough to get out of bed.</p><p>Moody raises an eyebrow as she joins him at the table for what appears to be a late brunch.</p><p>‘Not working today?’ she asks, and her voice on creaks a little.</p><p>‘I did the night shift last night,’ he says, putting the kettle on to boil again. ‘Off today.’</p><p>Remus nods.</p><p>‘Tell me one thing,’ he says, ‘just one.’</p><p>A slow grin slides across her face, the liveliest expression he’s seen on her face in weeks. It brings the youth back to her - she’s only thirty six - that’s still so young. Brings the life back to her eyes.</p><p>‘How did you do it?’ he says, and he knows he’s feeding her ego here, but for once he doesn’t mind. If anyone should have a bigger ego, it’s Lupin. ‘It wasn’t the veriterserum. It couldn’t be. The needle?’</p><p>Lupin laughs.</p><p>‘Veriterserum isn’t perfect. It asks you to tell the truth. But you have to ask the right questions. Where there isn’t any interpretation to be had.’</p><p>Moody thinks.</p><p>‘He asked you ‘is this your wand’? As far as I’m aware, that was your fucking wand?’</p><p>Remus laughs. She actually laughs.</p><p>‘Is this your wand?’ she repeats, ‘No. No it’s not my wand, because I’ve lost it. It’s in ministry custody. He asked me ‘do I know who killed Greyback and Dolohov’? No, that’s the truth. I presume they killed each other but I don’t know.’</p><p>‘Do you work for Dumbledore?’</p><p>Remus smirks. ‘No,’ she says, ‘I’m unpaid. I’m unemployed. I don’t work for anyone.’</p><p>‘And the needle?’</p><p>‘A moment to think. To get over the knee jerk reaction to answer the question, and think it through.’</p><p>‘A nice piece of transfiguration,’ he says, raising his mug to her.</p><p>‘Cheers.’</p><p>————-</p><p>‘It was Peter,’ Remus says, forty minutes later, when Moody has stopped fussing over and finally sat in the armchair. Remus is tucked up on the couch, just about starting to feel better.</p><p>She ignores the way that Moody startles, both eyes fixed on her face. Remus looks into her mug.</p><p>‘I didn’t hear him, or smell him. He managed to creep up on me and -‘ she gestures to her neck, where the bruises are only just starting to heal. Moody knows exactly what happened to her. ‘I thought he was going to kill me, but he didn’t. He said he could, and I believed him. His hand was - there was something different - it was like metal. Strong. Stronger than I know him to be. But he didn’t. He left me go.’</p><p>There’s silence.</p><p>‘It’s easy to kill a stranger, when you know that they’ve done something terrible, when you want revenge,’ Moody says slowly, ‘It’s harder to kill someone you know - let alone someone who used to be your friend. Especially by your own hand.’</p><p>Remus remembers, suddenly, why Moody has the reputation he does, and she wonders what it’s cost him to bring in every death eater he’s ever captured alive.</p><p>‘I don’t know if I would ever spare him,’ she says, and Moody shrugs.</p><p>‘That’s a call you won’t know until you’re in that situation and you have to make it. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. You’ll know the right thing when you’re there.’</p><p>‘How do you know the right thing?’</p><p>‘It’s whichever course of action means you live,’ and Remus nods at that kind of brutal logic.</p><p>‘I can’t believe we’re here again,’ Remus sighs, and rubs a hand over her aching head. Moody looks on sympathetically.</p><p>‘It’s different this time. You won’t -‘ he stutters uncharacteristically, and the awkwardness makes Remus raise her eyebrows. ‘Everyone knows where your loyalty lies,’ he says eventually, as if he’s worried she’s going to kick off, but wants to get the words out anyway.</p><p>‘I don’t really care what everyone thinks this time around,’ she says, ‘just so long as the important people know.’</p><p>Moody picks up a hairpin from where it’s been sitting on the coffee table. It’s the same kind of bobby pin she used in the holding cells. He waves his hand over it, wandlessly, and she watches as it transfigures.</p><p>When he hands it over to her, it’s a purple flower, just like the ones on her favourite mug.</p><p>Remus takes it with a smile.</p><p>—————</p><p>Christmas is -</p><p>Muted. And that’s being charitable.</p><p>Remus feels out of place against the cheery decorations that Molly and Sirius have put up in Grimmauld Place.</p><p>If it wasn’t for Molly’s strained face - Arthur is still injured, would probably still be in hospital if not for the ‘stitches’ situation - Remus would leave. But instead, she lets herself be persuaded, and she in turn persuades (bullies) Kingsley and Moody to join them for Christmas lunch.</p><p>Harry is sullen. The Weasley children not much better. Sirius is filled with a sort of manic energy that Remus vaguely recognises from school. The one that always meant trouble.</p><p>But it’s worth it - sort of - when Moody gleefully puts on the golden crown that fell out of his cracker, and sends a wink her way.</p><p>Kingsley kisses her under the mistletoe.</p><p>It’s a fine Christmas. Just fine.</p><p>————</p><p>New years is better.</p><p>Sirius challenges her to a drinking contest, and despite Molly’s frown and Kingsley’s raised eyebrows she accepts.</p><p><em>You fool, </em>she thinks gleeful, as Sirius sways and almost topples off his chair.</p><p>She drinks him under the table with ease, and can still walk in a straight line afterwards. Arthur and his boys look suitably impressed.</p><p>‘I spent most of my begotten youth drinking in clubs,’ she announces, somewhat slurred but altogether recognisable. She’s gloating. ‘Of course I can drink a bottle of gin.’</p><p>She rolls her eyes.</p><p>Sirius just laughs.</p><p>‘Always underestimated,’ he says, and Remus nods. She looses track of him then, but she thinks she sees him skulking off with Hestia an hour later.</p><p>Moody’s eye keeps drifting to the ceiling, and he’s smirking as if watching a particularly fascinating soap opera.</p><p>Remus resolutely doesn’t ask.</p><p>———-</p><p>When the count down to midnight begins, Kingsley is across the room with Tonks and Emmeline Vance. She can see Tonks puckering up, jokingly, and both women press kisses to Kingsley’s cheeks as big ben rings. Even though he wriggles and tries to get away, he ends up with lipstick kisses smeared all over him.</p><p>They’re laughing, and Remus smiles.</p><p>It’s inevitable then, that she turns and leans towards Moody. He barely blinks as she kisses him, chaste but lingering, and when she pulls away she’s rewarded with pink lips on his cheek.</p><p>‘Fuck you,’ he says, but there’s no bite to it. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he sounded <em>happy</em>.</p><p>‘Happy new year to you too,’ she says with another grin.</p><p>And then she has to lie down awkwardly on the couch because the room is spinning a bit.</p><p>————</p><p>It’s several weeks later. When the fire glows green, and Harry’s face appears, Remus nearly has a heart attack.</p><p>It’s late. Later than she’d meant to stay up, but the library is warm and cozy, and she’s tucked with a pile of books higher than the table.</p><p>Harry’s face appears, instantly recognisable - it’s the glasses - and Remus clutches a hand to her chest like some kind of victorian lady.</p><p>The thought makes her laugh. She makes a note to tell Moody later. He’ll get a kick out of it.</p><p>‘Harry! Are you ok?’ she says, sitting up and kicking the blanket off. ‘It’s late.’</p><p>That’s the wrong this to say. He makes a face, flinching and looks down. ‘I know, sorry to to bother you.’ He looks like a kicked puppy, and guilt immediately wells in Remus’ chest.</p><p>‘You’re always welcome, you know that. Do you want me to get Sirius?’</p><p>She assumes that’s why he’s calling, and she’s half way out of her seat when he says ‘uh, maybe you can help me?’</p><p>‘Of course,’ she hovers awkwardly for a moment, and kneels down by the fireplace, ignoring how her knees crack and she sits watching Harry’s face. ‘What’s up?’</p><p>It take a moment of stumbling and stuttering, of a completely non-sequitur and a moment when Harry gets frustrated that he can’t articulate what he wants to say, but seemingly simultaneously can’t bring himself to say it.</p><p>And then Remus understands.</p><p>She has to take a long breath, and close her eyes for a moment against the grief that threatens to overwhelm her. It’s been dormant for a long while now - despite her once thinking that she’d never be whole again - it’s been several longyears since she’s felt the sharp sting of <em>loss </em>quite as deeply as she does in this moment. Remus wonders when she stopped counting the days, weeks, months, years since Lily and James died. At one point she’d known down to the second.</p><p><em>Oh James, </em>she thinks. How terrible for the only image Harry has of his father be second hand perspectives. For one of the only things he’s seen of James, be that awful moment.</p><p>‘I don’t quite know where to start Harry,’ she says, apologetically. When she meets his eyes, there’s nothing short of desperation there.</p><p>‘She <em>hated </em>him,’ he whispers, and she understands. Harry has lived for several long years now, with the knowledge of two fundamental facts: that his mother’s love saved his life, and how much he is like his father.</p><p>‘No, she didn’t -‘</p><p>‘-But-‘</p><p>Remus holds her hand up, and Harry falls silent. Remus wracks her brains for the right words, for this moment feels strangely fragile, and it’s a heavy responsibility to know that whatever she says next might ruin Harry’s image of James forever.</p><p>‘At this moment, the moment you saw, James was young - not that that’s an excuse - but he was young and self involved and quite brilliant. That brings with it a certain - arrogance -‘</p><p>She stops. Harry looks defeated. She’s struck, suddenly, that he’s the same age as James was in this memory. That Harry is much kinder, and much more worn than James was at his age.</p><p>‘Let me start at the beginning: I shared a dorm with Lily. We knew each other well, and it took us a while to become proper friends. I’d known James before Hogwarts, see …’</p><p>————</p><p>It takes an hour, more or less, but as Remus talks the desperation leaks out of Harry’s face, and though she doesn’t quite do justice to the complicated love story Lily and James had, and some of it sounds so insane she’s certain that she’s making it up, <em>was there really a niffler involved at one point?</em> And Remus has missing scenes, like the evening where she’s almost certain Lily and James kissed for the first time, but she doesn’t really know when or where or even why, why that evening, what changed?</p><p>But she hopes that it’s enough.</p><p>‘The thing is,’ she says, voice horse now but still persevering on regardless, ‘there’s a tendency to idealise the dead. No one wants to speak ill of someone who’s no longer with us, and especially a couple who died so tragically and so young. So we end up with a, sort of, warped version of them. Your parents weren’t saints, Harry. They were flawed, real people who made mistakes. And I don’t think they’d mind me saying that. But they were kind, and good, and they grew up from that day you saw. And, most importantly, they loved you so very much, and they’d be so very proud of you. I think James would be ashamed and embarrassed of what you saw in that memory. I don’t think he’d try and defend it. I think he’d be able to admit that he was wrong.’</p><p>Harry nods. He looks like he’s thinking very hard.</p><p>‘Thank you,’ he says, ‘for talking like they were real people. Not, not many do that.’</p><p>‘They were real people Harry.’</p><p>Harry half shrugs, and Remus is struck by an awful pang at how distant Lily and James must be to him.</p><p>‘Will you do something for me?’ she asks quietly. ‘You won’t like it, but I truly truly think that this is important.’</p><p>He grimaces. ‘You want me to talk to Snape.’</p><p>Remus nods. ‘Yes, I do. I want you to go and ask him to continue with your occlumancy lessons.’ She’s apologetic, but firm. ‘It’s really important. Please will you?’</p><p>She almost adds, ‘for me’ on the end of it, but ultimately Harry owes her nothing.</p><p>He nods, seemingly pained. She’s asking a lot of him, she knows. Too many people seem to ask a lot of Harry, but this is so important for his safety.</p><p>‘I will,’ he sighs eventually, and rubs his eyes tired.</p><p>‘Thank you. And you can call me, or write if you want to talk. I’m always here.’</p><p>That gets a genuine smile, albeit a small one.</p><p>‘Thank you. I should go,’ and he looks over his shoulder.</p><p>‘Go on then. I’ll see you soon.’</p><p>He disappears in a flare of green flames, and Remus sighs and leans back against the fireplace.</p><p>It doesn’t take a genius to realise that Moody’s been hovering at the door for the last half an hour, shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation. He limps in now, and settles himself down.</p><p>‘It was good that you told him to speak to Snape,’ he says gruff. ‘He needs to. I’d teach him myself if I thought I was good enough.’</p><p>‘I hope so,’ she says, ‘I hope Snape helps him.’</p><p>Moody has no answer to that.</p><p>————-</p><p>Time passes.</p><p>Moody trails deatheaters with Tonks.</p><p>He does his guard duty at the Department of Mysteries.</p><p>He cooks bolognese by the bucket load, and lets Molly Weasley feed him up the rest of the time.</p><p>It feels like there’s something rising. Something in the air, like before a storm.</p><p>Moody hates it when he’s right.</p><p>————-</p><p>Time passes.</p><p>Remus spends full moon nights with the pack, success with them much more likely after Greyback’s death, and full moon days on Moody’s couch.</p><p>She spends time with Sirius, going over strategies, and investment opportunities.</p><p>She and Kingsley make love desperately on the floor of his (their) kitchen, after a long night of watch duty and a near miss. Remus clings to him, mindful of his bruised ribs and the concussion he definitely has, pressing kisses to the side of his face, clutching his shoulders urging him <em>closer, closer, </em>as close as possible, so that she might be able to protect him from harm.</p><p>There’s something in the air, Remus thinks later, as she catches her breath, resting her head on Kingsley’s shoulder. She strokes a hand down his bare chest, and thinks <em>god, I don’t want to loose you.</em></p><p>‘You won’t,’ Kingsley whispers. ‘It’ll be fine.’</p><p>‘I love you,’ she whispers into his shoulder, and she <em>aches </em>at the truth of it.</p><p>Remus can’t bring herself to say anything else.</p><p>Kingsley smiles, and whispers it back.</p><p>————-</p><p>There’s something wrong with Tonks, Remus realises sometime in the spring.</p><p>It happens slowly, but one day she turns around and Tonks is a little less vibrant. A little quieter, a little sadder.</p><p>She doesn’t quite know what to do about it.</p><p>The thing is, Remus doesn’t have that many female friends. Her friends have wasted away over the years, and though Moody has held her close, and her relationship with Kingsley means that she’s always welcome with his sisters, she doesn’t have many friends.</p><p>It’s also been a long time since she’s done anything like ‘girl talk’ or ‘girl code’. She barely remembers how it goes.</p><p>But Remus has <em>been there. </em>She’s been there when world is shrinking and the war is brewing, and you just want someone to hear you, to see you.</p><p>So she invites Tonk to lunch.</p><p>It seems wild that with all the danger on the horizon they can still go for lunch. But whilst Voldemort is hiding in the shadows, they should be perfectly safe in a muggle coffee shop for lunch.</p><p>It’s -</p><p>Awkward.</p><p>Just a bit.</p><p>They don’t really know each other, and they haven’t really hung out. They make inoffensive small talk whilst they order and get drinks and then silence falls.</p><p>‘Are you ok?’ Remus asks slowly.</p><p>‘What? Of course!’ Tonks smiles widely. Remus has seen enough to know it’s fake.</p><p>‘Are you really though? You’ve not really been yourself recently. I thought - you might want to talk about it.’</p><p>Silence.</p><p>Remus takes a sip of coffee, and racks her brains for something <em>anything </em>to say when -</p><p>‘I don’t want you to think any less of me,’ Tonks mutters.</p><p>‘I would never.’</p><p>‘The guys-‘</p><p>‘-the guys don’t know anything. They’re also emotionally constipated,’ Tonks laughs into her coffee, and Remus carries on emboldened ‘They have no idea, but they would <em>never</em> think any less of you.’</p><p>Tonks twirls the spoon around her cup.</p><p>‘It’s about a boy,’</p><p>Remus had guessed that.</p><p>‘Who’s the boy?’</p><p>Tonks presses her lips together and shakes her head.</p><p>‘Ok, forget that,’ Remus says, waving her hand. ‘What’s going on sweetheart?’</p><p>The ‘sweetheart’ just slips out. It’s the kind of thing that she calls Kingsley sometimes, but rarely anyone else. She and Lily had gone through a phase of using it, late in seventh year and then on once they’d graduated. Remus can almost hear Lily’s voice in her head, ‘sweetheart’ she’d coo after a rough full moon.</p><p>But that was a long time ago. How many years and months now? Remus hasn’t counted them for a while.</p><p>Tonks nods slowly.</p><p>‘I messed up my chance with - with this guy. And I know it’s stupid, because there’s so much going on at the moment, right? Like, so what if this guy thinks that I’m an idiot? What does it even matter? But he’s one of my closest friends, and I don’t want to loose him, but I think that I’ve already lost him and I <em>don’t know what to do.’</em></p><p>Tonks is getting teary, and Remus leans across the table and takes her hand.</p><p>‘So I don’t have a lot of luck with love,’ Remus says, ‘so this is a disclaimer. But once upon a time, a long while ago I fell in love with one of my closest friends.’</p><p>‘Yeah, my cousin. Go on.’</p><p>Remus inclines her head in agreement. ‘I’ve also fought in this war before. You know, I’ve been here before. And sometimes it’s easier to face the minor problems right, because if you try and deal with the fact that we’re fighting a war, then you can’t possibly comprehend that.’</p><p>‘Right, and it’s like, if I die, do I want to die without knowing? Without knowing what it’s like to - to kiss him, to be with him. But I also don’t want to loose our friendship.’</p><p>‘I can’t tell you what to do,’ Remus says, sadly, ‘there’s no right answer here. You have to do what you think is best. But! I’m - I’m here, for you. If you want me. If you ever need me.’</p><p>Remus feels incredibly lame. And <em>old, </em>Merlin, Tonks is only twenty-four. When Remus was twenty-four she was drinking in clubs and throwing up on Moody’s flowerbed.</p><p>Tonks squeezes her hand tight, and she smiles, the most genuine smile Remus has seen from her in months.</p><p>‘Thank you,’ she whispers. ‘Just, thank you.’</p><p>Speaking of Moody’s flowerbed -</p><p>‘Did I ever tell you how I became friends with Moody?’</p><p>Tonks shakes her head.</p><p>‘Well, I was like, super drunk, in London right. Same age as you now, really -‘</p><p>It’s worth it. Tonks laughs and Remus spills all the gossip, and when Tonks says, ‘do you wanna get a drink?’ Remus thinks <em>this is a bad idea, </em>and simultaneously <em>yes I really do.</em></p><p>————</p><p>Remus gets back to her and Kingsley’s flat, a drunk Tonks in tow, and she tucks Tonks in on the sofa and whispers soft in her ear.</p><p>Kingsley is frowning from the doorway, eyebrows raised.</p><p>‘Sorry we’re late,’ Remus whispers, and Kingsley surpasses a laugh.</p><p>‘How’s Tonks?’</p><p>‘Better. I think.’</p><p>Kingsley nods, and kisses her slow.</p><p>Tonks lets out a massive snore from the couch and they stifle their sniggers.</p><p>————-</p><p>Remus feels bad for Tonks though, when she drags herself off the couch early the next morning muttering about drills and shifts.</p><p>When Moody asks her about Tonks a couple of days later, Remus denies all knowledge but she can see that Moody doesn’t believe her.</p><p>————</p><p>Time passes.</p><p>————-</p><p>No one know where Moody lives. This is a carefully guarded secret shared with only a few that Moody trusts:</p><p>Lupin.</p><p>Shacklebolt.</p><p>Dumbledore (reluctantly).</p><p>
  <em>Amelia Bones.</em>
</p><p>—————</p><p>It’s late. The sun has started to set, and Moody is sharing a cup of tea with Lupin when the wards start to flicker.</p><p>Moody jumps to his feet, and peering out of the front windows he sees someone half sprawled by the front fence. After a moment, he realises it’s Amelia.</p><p>‘Shit,’ Lupin says, and with a glance to Moody she opens the door and hurries down the drive and crouches in front of Amelia. Moody fusses with the wards, for a long moment. The equivalent of unlocking the door for long enough for Remus to pull Amelia to her feet, and heave her back to the drive.</p><p>Moody takes a minute to secure more wards, ones he doesn’t usually employ, but he pulls up the metaphorical drawer bridge, and locks it down.</p><p>Once that’s done, he turns back to Amelia.</p><p>She looks <em>rough.</em></p><p><em>‘</em>The ministry has fallen,’ she says through bloody teeth. Lupin is trying to stem the bleeding from her nose and head.</p><p>‘Fallen?’</p><p>‘Gone. Scrimgeour is dead. You-know-who has taken it. Fuck-‘ in response to Lupin’s wand. Lupin is handy at healing spells, Moody remembers suddenly. She’s had plenty of practice.</p><p>Lupin runs her wand up and down Amelia, pressing a cold compress into her hands.</p><p>‘Here.’</p><p>Moody ducks into the bathroom and retrieves his first aid kid. They make Amelia knock back a couple of blood replenishers, and a pain reliever.</p><p>‘What do we do?’ Lupin asks.</p><p>‘Nothing we can do,’ Amelia says through gritted teeth. ‘What’s the pla-’</p><p>‘Tonks,’ Lupin interrupts, ‘Kingsley? We need to get them, get to them.’</p><p>‘We don’t know where they are,’ Amelia says, ‘if they were on duty-‘</p><p>‘-Were they? Were they on duty tonight?’ Lupin asks. She’s looking to Moody.</p><p>‘I don’t know,’ Moody admits quietly. He’s straining to remember the shift roots.</p><p>‘What’s Dumbledore’s plan?’ Amelia says, and there’s a pause.</p><p>Dumbledore’s plan is known to only him, Moody thinks snidely, and possibly Potter. Because of everyone at their disposal, a seventeen year old boy is their only shot. Lupin’s twisted lips says she’s thinking the same thing.</p><p>————-</p><p>Moody doesn’t spy on people, no matter what others might think. He doesn’t actually spends his time spying, like some awful peeping-tom and he especially doesn’t spy on his -</p><p>His friends.</p><p>He is, however, spying intently on Lupin and Black in the dining room, mostly to make sure Lupin doesn’t do something incredibly stupid like jeopardise her relationship with Shacklebolt, and secondly because he’ll do anything that might justify giving Black a smack around the head.</p><p>He’s never claimed to be perfect.</p><p>It’s an odd conversation, by the looks of it. Lupin and Black are bent close together, heads almost touching. He’d say it was romantic, if not from the looks on their faces - a sort of grim shock, on Lupin’s and a resigned look in Black’s eyes.</p><p>There’s something going on. He’s not particularly good at lip reading, but he’d have to be blind to not see them repeatedly talking about ‘Potter’.</p><p>Strange.</p><p>—————</p><p>Lupin tells him.</p><p>Of course she does. He never doubted for a second that Lupin would tell him, and probably Shacklebolt and Tonks exactly what they were discussing.</p><p>It comes two days later, and she won’t say anything in Grimmauld place, ‘too many ears,’ she whispers to Shacklebolt, so it waits until they manage to sneak out and meet up at Moody’s cottage.</p><p>There aren’t many places they’re safe now - the number of people who’ve gone into hiding is shocking, the number of people who have been unexpectedly displaced, particularly muggleborns is incredibly distressing. But between Grimmauld Place and Moody’s cottage, they’re safe even if Moody doesn’t fully know where the Weasleys have disappeared to.</p><p>They sit around Moody’s dining table, lights down, curtains drawn, warded from ground to high heaven. Despite this, Moody can’t shake the sick sort of instinct in his gut, the same one that has saved him countless times, that says t<em>his is the last time they’ll see each other.</em></p><p>He just doesn’t know if that’s ‘the last time for a while,’ or ‘the last time ever’. He hopes, almost desperately, that it’s the former.</p><p>Lupin takes a gulp of her tea.</p><p>‘Horcruxes,’ she says, with the manner of someone delivering a death sentence.</p><p>Moody feels like he’s been hit over the head.</p><p>‘Seven of them, that’s what Dumbledore thinks,’ she continues. ‘Harry told Sirius, even though Dumbledore told him not to tell. Dumbledore doesn’t want us to know, but I don’t know why.’</p><p>
  <em>Horcruxes.</em>
</p><p>‘Do we know what they are?’ Shacklebolt asks.</p><p>‘Some,’ and Lupin lists them, Dumbledore’s suspicions.</p><p>‘Seven,’ Tonks breathes. ‘No wonder he’s barely human any more. He’s only got, what? Less than 1% of his soul left in his body. That’s wild.’</p><p>‘So,’ Shacklebolt says, ever pragmatic, sounding entirely composed, that Moody would believe him if he couldn’t see Shacklebolt’s white knuckled grip on Lupin’s hand. ‘How do we find them?’</p><p>There’s a resounding silence to that.</p><p>—————</p><p>They bring Sirius into the fold, and Remus is grateful, even if she can see how much Moody doesn’t want him here.</p><p>She’s also grateful that Kingsley - well -</p><p>That Kingsley is Kingsley. That he’s not prone to jealousy, or the kind of petty drama. That he nods when Sirius joins them, and says ‘makes sense, he’ll have direct intel from Potter’, and that’s that.</p><p>She whispers to him, in the draughty hallway of Grimmauld Place, ‘you know there’s nothing between me and Sirius, right? That died a death a long time ago.’</p><p>And Kingsley kisses her, deep and lingering, he only kisses her like that now, as if every kiss they share might be the last and he wants to do it properly, and whispers back ‘I know. I trust you.’</p><p>So she kisses him back, equally slow and whispers ‘I love you’ into his mouth.</p><p>It’s a good decision, to bring Sirius into this, because he gives them leads on one horcrux.</p><p>‘How are we going to destroy them?’ Remus asks, over tombs of books from the Black family library. ‘It’s one thing to find them, it’s another to destroy them.’</p><p>No one has an answer.</p><p>—————</p><p>‘What <em>is</em> the horcrux?’ Remus asks Sirius idly, over the dining table in Grimmauld place almost a week later.</p><p>It’s just the two of them left, everyone else disappeared into bed. She hasn’t seen anyone outside of their group of five for months now.</p><p>Harry is at hogwarts, reluctantly, but with Dumbledore as headmaster, Hogwarts still stands strong, her doors closed. It’s probably the safest place in the country.</p><p>‘Huh?’ Sirius says back.</p><p>‘The horcrux? What does it look like? What object is it encased in? I can’t believe I haven’t asked before’</p><p>‘Oh, a locket. Slytherin’s locket.’</p><p>Remus blinks.</p><p>
  <em>A locket?</em>
</p><p>Remus feels a panicked heat rise up the back of her neck, can feel every hair on her arms stand on end.</p><p>‘What?’ Sirius says.</p><p>‘There was a locket here,’ she croaks, her voice cracking. ‘No one could open it. It stunk of dark magic.’</p><p>Sirius drops his glass, and it shatters on the table spilling brandy everywhere. They both ignore it, gazing at each other with wide eyes.</p><p>‘Fuck.’</p><p>——————</p><p>Moody hates Mundungus Fletcher. Nothing brings him more joy than cornering that filthy little rat in Knockturn Alley, holding his wand to Fletcher’s throat and hissing:</p><p>‘Where’s the locket?’</p><p>Shacklebolt is acting backup, standing silently at the end of the alley, watching Moody’s back.</p><p>Fletcher mutters and huffs and eventually hands it over. He complains that he’s got a buyer lined up, but he submits in the end.</p><p>Moody is so giddy with the win and it makes him foolish, for a split second. He doesn’t see the deatheaters until a moment too late.</p><p>There’s too many of them, and a glance at Shacklebolt says he knows it too.</p><p>Shacklebolt sends a range of stunners, and wide reaching shield spell. This gives Moody that chance to vanish the locket. He sends it to his own vanishing cabinet, in his cottage, and he hopes that Lupin finds it.</p><p>That’s all he can do.</p><p>——————-</p><p>They hear from Mundungus about Moody and Kingsley, and Remus doesn’t cry, although Tonks does, her hair brown and mousey.</p><p>Remus puts her head in her hands, for a long moment, and then takes a deep breath. Sirius watches from the kitchen counter.</p><p>‘I’m sorry,’ he says.</p><p>‘They’re not dead,’ Tonks says desperately, and it sounds like a question.</p><p>‘Of course not,’ Remus says. She doesn’t say that the deatheaters will have kept them alive as sources of information. She doesn’t say that they have no resources to rescue them, no idea where to start. She doesn’t say that there are worse things that being dead - the blank faces of Alice and Frank hover behind her eyes - but when she meets Sirius’ eye, Sirius who spent twelve years with only his nightmares for company, she knows he understands.</p><p>She says nothing.</p><p>‘What do we do now?’ Tonks asks, and Remus and Sirius look at each other, slowly.</p><p>‘We keep going,’ Sirius says. ‘We keep on the hunt for horcruxes. Do you think they got the locket from ‘Dung?’</p><p>Remus thinks long and hard for a moment, and says ‘If they did, I know where it is.’</p><p>—————-</p><p>Sure enough, there in Moody’s vanishing cabinet, is the locket.</p><p>It <em>stinks</em> of dark magic. It’s disgusting.</p><p>They sit around Moody’s kitchen table in silence.</p><p>‘Ok,’ Remus says. ‘The problem is, we need to find the remaining six horcruxes, and we don’t know where they are. So what are we going to do?’</p><p>Silence.</p><p>—————</p><p>Hogwarts falls. Dumbledore is killed. Harry, (presumably accompanied by Ron and Hermione) disappears.</p><p>Sirius punches a hole through the wall of Moody’s living room.</p><p>Remus nearly kills herself the next full moon, slicing through her gut and dislocating her knee. She nearly takes Sirius with her, giving him a concussion that lasts three days, but eventually they’re ok.</p><p>Tonks discovers that fiendfyre can (probably) destroy a horcrux, alongside various venoms.</p><p>They’re all declared wanted by the ministry. Sirius enjoys the fact that his wanted picture is more modern than his azkaban mugshot. Apparently he looks better.</p><p>——————</p><p>It’s cold in Moody’s cottage. The heating was cut off the beginning of December - presumably the bill hadn’t been paid - and they’re not able to turn it back on without giving themselves away. So they suffer in the cold.</p><p>Remus is curled up in the spare bed, which has long been allocated as <em>her </em>bed. Tonks shares with her most nights, with Sirius on the sofa. None of them dare touch Moody’s room, let alone his bed.</p><p>Sirius comes barging in, strips the duvet off Remus to her great despair. He leans over her, the same way he used to when they were at school, when he’d sneak into the girls dorm, and presses his face next to hers.</p><p>‘What, Sirius?’</p><p>He just grips her biceps and pulls her up, disturbing Tonks too.</p><p>‘I’ve had an idea,’ and there’s the manic glint in his eyes that’s all too familiar.</p><p>—————</p><p>It turns out, Sirius has drawn a map of the UK on Moody’s living room wall incredible details and painstakingly filled in. It’s almost exactly to scale.</p><p>‘What, and I cannot stress this enough Sirius, the fuck?’ Tonks says, wrapped in dressing down.</p><p>Sirius brandishes the locket at them - the one they’ve been unable to destroy - and says:</p><p>‘We can use <em>this</em> horcrux to identify the locations of the <em>other </em>horcruxses, and plot them on the map. The same way we enchanted the Marauder’s Map.’</p><p>‘Holy shit,’ Remus mutters, almost involuntarily, and it startles them so much the two of them collapse into hysterical giggles. They can’t catch their breath for a long time.</p><p>Tonks stands there hands outstretched and eyebrows raised.</p><p>‘What is happening?’ she asks, but the way she says it makes Remus think she’s talking to herself.</p><p>—————</p><p>After a week of casting, the map works better than Remus expects, better than her wildest dreams, the ink blots appearing on the map of the UK.</p><p>Except -</p><p>They’d expected one horcrux to move around. The snake.</p><p>Instead, there are <em>two</em> horcruxes on the map that move around. After examining the map for two weeks, Remus comes to a conclusion that she can’t voice out loud, and leaves Sirius and Tonks to their speculations.</p><p>Remus locks herself in the bathroom and cries silently. Cries for Harry, cries because she feels powerless, because she misses Kingsley, and she misses Moody and she can’t bear to think about them because part of her hopes that they’re alive somewhere, that they’ve escaped and they’re ok. And the bigger part of her thinks that they’re already dead, and she should be racking up the counter in her mind - it’s been sixteen years since Lily and James, and six months since Moody and Kingsley.</p><p>And the worst thing, is that she may never know for sure. She touches her lips, and thinks of the last kiss Kingsley gave her, presses her fingertips against her bottom lip and pretends for a wild moment that they’re Kingsley’s lips and it just makes her cry more.</p><p>Remus sits on the floor and weeps.</p><p>The she gets up, washes her face, and gets back to work.</p><p>——————</p><p>When one of the horcruxes blinks out of existence, they realise that someone else is hunting them as well. Tonks thinks Harry, and Remus can see the slow realisation on Tonks’ face too, as she gazes at the map, and thinks of Harry and -</p><p>Tonks looks at her, but Remus can only shake her head.</p><p>Later, when they’re tucked up in bed, Tonks curls around Remus’ back and presses her face into Remus’ shoulder blade.</p><p>‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispers, barely there.</p><p>‘I can’t either,’ Remus whispers back.</p><p>‘Do you think he knows?’</p><p>Remus doesn’t know if she means Sirius or Harry. Either way:</p><p>‘I hope not,’ she whispers.</p><p>—————-</p><p>Moody comes back to himself in a dungeon. Shacklebolt is there too, fortunately. They’ll get further together. Assuming they can get <em>somewhere. Anywhere</em>.</p><p>The deatheaters have also forgotten to remove his roving eye, which makes Moody shake his head. Particularly when he scans the floors above them and spies Dawlish <em>who was an auror. </em>Pathetic.</p><p>Shacklebolt is already sat upright, leaning back against the wall, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankle. For all intents and purposes he looks as disaffected as he does when sat on Moody’s sofa, waiting for Lupin to get ready.</p><p>Moody approves. Shacklebolt really is excellent. Moody shifts himself up, assessing his head and shifting his shoulders.</p><p>‘Alright?’ Shacklebolt mutters.</p><p>‘Aye,’ Moody sighs. ‘Fuck.’</p><p>‘Yeah.’</p><p>—————-</p><p>It’s bearable.</p><p>Not pleasant, certainly. But bearable. Moody spent six months trapped in his own trunk. At least the dungeon has more space that that, and he has Shacklebolt for company.</p><p>The deatheaters are amateurs. Absolute fucking amateurs. They really don’t know the value in what they’ve got - not only are Moody and Shacklebolt order members, they’re aurors. They’re <em>full </em>of secrets and intel and lots of useful things that Voldemort would like to know.</p><p>But questioning includes a few cruciatus curses, and threats to break various body parts, and then a return to the dungeon.</p><p>Perfectly bearable until they can figure out how to get out of here. Days, weeks, months pass.</p><p>It’s all going fine, until Bellatrix Lestrange turns up.</p><p>—————</p><p>‘Shit,’ Moody mutters, watching the ceiling intently, ‘Bellatrix Lestrange.’</p><p>Shacklebolt purses his lips.</p><p>‘We might be able to use that,’ he says, ‘she’s unstable.’</p><p>And isn’t that an understatement. ’What do you have in mind?’ Moody mutters, as Dolohov and Malfoy arrive at the gate, wands drawn, and beckon them forward.</p><p>‘Follow my lead?’ Shacklebolt hisses back, and Moody inclines his head.</p><p>Moody spots Pettigrew upstairs too.</p><p>
  <em>Interesting.</em>
</p><p>——————</p><p>Between the three of them, Sirius, Remus and Tonks manage to break into Gringotts and steal a horcrux. It results in a very dodgy escape, and Tonks nearly looses her left foot when she falls over a grate, and Remus gets caught with a particularly nasty hex, but they get away.</p><p>It’s one of the most haphazard ridiculous plans Remus has been involved in, maybe ever. And yet.</p><p>They nearly burn down a large part of the forrest of dean when they use fiendfyre, but in an afternoon they manage to destroy both the cup and the locket.</p><p>When they get back to Moody’s, Remus helps herself to his expensive liquor and feels no regret about it. She thinks he would approve.</p><p>——————</p><p>Bellatrix Lestrange is a nasty piece of work. When Moody lays eyes on her, all he can think of is Alice and Frank Longbottom, both promising young aurors, with their whole lives ahead of them, robbed of everything. Worse than dead, what happened to them.</p><p>Anger swells in his gut, and he lets it. He can use it.</p><p>He keeps one eye on Shacklebolt, who is cuffed to a chair in the corner, and the other on Lestrange who is dancing around the room taunting them.</p><p>‘Mad-eye,’ she coos, in an awful parody of baby talk, ‘Mad-eye Moody, long time no see.’</p><p>Moody vaguely considers some response relating, but not limited to, seeing her in hell, but he holds his tongue. He’s following Shacklebolt’s lead on this one.</p><p>He watches Shacklebolt who’s looking closely at the large windows that stretch from floor to ceiling, and Moody hope’s he’s not considering throwing himself out of one.</p><p>But if it works, it works. At this point, he’s not fussy.</p><p>‘Where’s Dumbledore?’ Lestrange coos, getting up in Moody’s face, and he can feel her breath on his cheek.</p><p>‘Dead,’ he grunts, and then grunts again as she smacks him.</p><p>‘Where is he?’ She hisses, and Moody shrugs as best he can.</p><p>‘Dead,’ he says again. ‘Dunno what else to tell you.’</p><p>He catches Shacklebolt’s eye, and Shacklebolt makes a gesture with his chin. A sort of nod towards Moody, and he raises and lowers his eyebrows in quick succession.</p><p>Moody gets it. Shacklebolt wants all eyes on him, while he does - whatever he needs to do.</p><p>Moody can do that. He can play distraction, bait, any role required here. So he spits in Lestrange’s direction, and is gives a loud deep belly laugh when it catches her on the cheek.</p><p>It’s worth the cruciatus that comes his way.</p><p>It’s like they’ve <em>forgotten</em> about Shacklebolt, the fucking <em>amateurs.</em> Moody has never understood how Shacklebolt can sink into any background, disappear in plain sight, it’s a skill Moody’s never had. And Shacklebolt is not a small man by any means but there’s just something about him that means people’s eyes glide over him. Moody wonders if it’s some kind of wandless glamour. </p><p>Honestly? Fuck Lupin, Moody’s starting to think he’d better keep Shacklebolt for himself.</p><p>So all eyes are on Moody when Shacklebolt starts to move, shoulders shifting in increments, and Moody doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he knows how to keep attention on him.</p><p>When Lestrange brings out the veriterserum, Moody has to stifle a grin.</p><p>He doesn’t have a needle, or a hair pin, but he doesn’t need it. At every question, he pulls agains the bonds around his wrists, and watches as Lestrange gets more and more irate as he avoids her questions.</p><p>—————</p><p>This only lasts twenty minutes, before Shacklebolt casts at her - where the fuck did he get a wand from? How did he get out of his bonds? Moody doesn’t know and he was <em>watching </em>for merlin’s sake - and then it’s a quick but bloody battle and Shacklebolt emerges victorious.</p><p>‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ he mutters to Moody, as he unties Moody’s wrists.</p><p>‘I’m not going out the window,’ Moody grits out, and Shacklebolt only laughs. They pocket the wands of the deatheaters laid out on the floor, and leg it.</p><p>Moody spares a quick glance for Pettigrew sprawled on the floor. He entertains the idea of killing him. But he thinks of Lupin, still alive due to Pettigrew’s cowardice, or his loyalty or something else altogether.</p><p>In the end, Moody leaves him where he is. He’ll face his justice at some point, and it’s not Moody’s place to issue it out. Pettigrew’s magical hand twitches.</p><p>—————</p><p>Moody can move pretty quick when he needs to. He cultivates his limp, plays it up as it’s always worth being underestimated, but actually he’s pretty limber in his old age.</p><p>Not as much as Shacklebolt, of course, who’s thirty years younger and fitter, but he keeps up. Amelia would be proud, he thinks with a smirk.</p><p>They get to the edge of the apparition line, and Shacklebolt holds out a hand for Moody, who clasps it tightly and then they’re gone.</p><p>—————-</p><p>They reappear in the wild countryside, somewhere Moody vaguely recognises as an order safe house, and Shacklebolt trudges forward leading the way up some windy steps to a smallish cottage.</p><p>It’s empty, and pretty derelict, but freedom is freedom, and they share relieved grins once they’ve set the wards and sit down.</p><p>Moody sleeps in a bed that night, for the first time in months and its <em>blissful</em>.</p><p>——————</p><p>The next two days are spent planning, plotting, and generally getting themselves sorted.</p><p>Naturally, the plan they’ve developed is scrapped almost as soon as it’s finished. <em>Nothing goes to plan any more,</em> Moody thinks despondent. Things would be much easier if they did.</p><p>‘Who’s there?’ Moody shouts out the back door, with Shacklebolt standing back up at his shoulder. He’s spotted movement out the window, and they’re ready to attack.</p><p>The figure comes forward slowly from between the trees. A young woman, hands raised but shaking.</p><p>‘I’m sorry,’ she calls, ‘I didn’t know there was anyone in here. I was looking for food.’</p><p>Moody’s generally a good judge of character, and there’s nothing but sincerity behind her eyes.</p><p>‘Where are you from?’ he calls back, ‘long way from home out here?’</p><p>She scuffs her shoe in the dirt and slowly lowers her hands, but makes no move to grasp a wand or a weapon.</p><p>‘From the camp over the ridge.’</p><p>‘Camp?’ Shacklebolt asks.</p><p>‘It may have escaped your notice,’ she says, suddenly snide, and honestly Moody respects this more than anything else so far. ‘But muggles and muggleborns are not exactly welcome in wizarding spaces at the moment. We’ve been forced into hiding, and this is one of many camps.’</p><p>Refugee camps, Moody realises.</p><p>‘And you’ve run out of food?’</p><p>The girl’s shoulders slump.</p><p>‘And medicine, and water and - everything.’ She says softly. ‘I knew there were some properties here, I thought I might be able to find something.’</p><p>Moody shares a look with Shacklebolt.</p><p>What Moody wants to do is go and find Lupin and Tonks and Amelia. He wants to scope it out and get back home, and figure out a plan of <em>how the fuck are they going to win this?</em></p><p>And Moody’s as Slytherin as they come, even if he’d shrugged off his old school colours years ago. He’s got no problem doing whatever’s necessary to achieve his goals.</p><p>But this.</p><p>How can he walk away from this?</p><p>The girl is drenched, skinny and strained. She doesn’t look like Lupin, not really, but there’s something vaguely reminiscent - a strength of someone doing the best they can in the awful circumstances they find themself in - the kind of hard ‘judge me if you want’ look in her eye that is familiar.</p><p>A glance at Shacklebolt says he’s thinking the same thing.</p><p>So they nod, and Moody puts his wand away, and says ‘we can help you with that, if you want?’</p><p>The girl is stoic, searching their faces for a trick, but ultimately she’s in no position to reject their help.</p><p>When they arrive at the makeshift camp, Moody’s seen such things before, there are more people there than they expect. Closer to a hundred.</p><p>Skilled witches and wizards, without wands which have been stolen from them by a facist government, desperation in the air. </p><p>Moody thinks<em> we need to help them.</em></p><p>So they stay.</p><p>—————</p><p>Remus lies in bed, late at night, listens to Tonks snoring in her ear, and wonders what she’ll do if Kingsley and Moody are both dead.</p><p>She feels like her feet have been swept out from underneath her, and she’s constantly unable to find her balance.</p><p>No more monthly drinks. No more calling Moody at three in the morning drunk off her arse. No more Kingsley in her bed, in her arms, no more arguments and dirty jokes, and sarcastic quips behind his stoic facade.</p><p>Just -</p><p>No more.</p><p>—————</p><p>They get the news early, in the camp. One spring evening the message comes. Moody and Shacklebolt share a look, and apparate to Hogwarts.</p><p>Here goes nothing.</p><p>—————-</p><p>When it goes, it goes quickly, as these things do.</p><p>Remus can see from the map on the wall that Harry is at Hogwarts. She can also see that the two other remaining horcruxes are there too.</p><p>So that’s where they need to be.</p><p>Sirius gazes at the map for a long moment, and Remus can see the slow realisation dawn over his face. He shakes it off, after a beat, and wraps his arms around the both of them just before they apparate. Remus presses her forehead to his cheek, and she’s grateful for him.</p><p>‘Come on ladies,’ he says, all full of charm and swagger, ‘lets go and kick some arse.’</p><p>Tonks cracks her knuckles, and winks.</p><p>‘Lets.’</p><p>————</p><p>The battle is bloody and desperate.</p><p>There’s an awful moment when Remus spots Kingsley, and she nearly gets herself killed because she doesn’t spot Dolohov to her right. But the spell is rebounded, a strong shield charm flows over her skin, and when she turns there’s Moody.</p><p>Of course it’s Moody. She should have known.</p><p>There’s a terrible lull, when they think that Harry is dead, and Remus clutches Sirius’ hand as he weeps and rages, and reaches out with her other hand for Kingsley, and kisses him desperately.</p><p>But Harry is not dead, and Remus doesn’t understand the how or the why and frankly <em>she doesn’t care</em>.</p><p>————</p><p>Afterwards, Remus walks through the shattered remains of the great hall, and when she sees Moody, she can barely breathe. </p><p>Moody wraps her up in his arms. He holds her tight, around the ribs and he tucks his head down into her shoulder.</p><p>Remus wraps her arms around his shoulders, and clings to him. Clutches his coat in her fists, her chest heaving, and she presses kisses to the side of his bristly face.</p><p>Tonks barrels into them, and she’s crying, big heaving sobs. She’s warm against Remus, and Remus reaches out and clings to her hand.</p><p>Kingsley joins them, not as enthused as Tonks, but his hands are warm on her hips where they rest heavy, and he kisses the back of her head.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody finds himself at the centre of some sort of group hug.</p><p>It would be embarrassing, if he wasn’t so fucking relieved. He holds Lupin close, looks at her worn familiar face and there’s such a <em>pang </em>in his stomach. He hadn’t even realised how desperately he’s missed her until she’s <em>here</em> and he can see she’s safe and whole still.</p><p>He catches Shacklebolt’s eye over the girls’ heads.</p><p>Shacklebolt’s bleeding, he looks worn and haggard, and they've been friends for a long while now, so Moody loosens an arm that’s wrapped around Lupin and he claps Shacklebolt on the arm, pulling him closer.</p><p>Shacklebolt gives him a small smile, and wraps his arms around them all as best he can.</p><p>————</p><p>They go back to Moody’s cottage after the battle by universal agreement. Tonks disappears home, to her mum and dad, but Lupin and Shacklebolt come back to his because -</p><p>Well.</p><p>Where else would they go?</p><p>He glares at Lupin, when he sees the map on his wall. He can <em>feel </em>the enchantments on it, and it’s going to be a <em>bitch </em>to unpick. Other than that though, the cottage is in fairly good condition. His room is exactly as he left it, he notes with some amusement.</p><p>Moody reheats some leftovers from his freezer, while Lupin showers, and Shacklebolt lies on the floor and tries to stretch out his back. When Moody brings the food in, Shacklebolt is doing some sort of yoga-esque pose, apparently he’s pulled something, and they make eye contact, and there’s just <em>something.</em></p><p>When Remus joins them in the living room, all warm from the shower, dressed in the spare pyjamas she keeps there, they’re doubled over laughing.</p><p>Shacklebolt is sprawled helpless, and Moody has had to balance the dinner on the sideboard lest he drop it, a hand over his eyes, and he hasn’t laughed like this since he was a little boy. Lupin’s raised eyebrows only make them laugh harder, and eventually they settle.</p><p>Moody sits up late, long after the others have gone to bed. He nurses his tea, and watches the sun rise.</p><p>There are two thoughts, bouncing around his head, incessant.</p><p>One, a general disbelief that he’s alive and home agin. And two -</p><p>Two, how normal it feels for Lupin and Shacklebolt to kip in his spare room.</p><p>He sits there until Lupin joins him. She gives him a hug from behind, rests her head on his shoulder and presses a kiss to his cheek.</p><p>————</p><p>Moody knows about the baby before Lupin does.</p><p>Following the next full moon, he and Shacklebolt patch Lupin up, and he’s examining her closely with his roving eye - he doesn’t normally, but following the battle earlier in the month and the fact he hasn’t seen her for <em>almost half a year</em> he thinks he’s allowed his paranoia - and he sees -</p><p>Well.</p><p>He finds a little intruder in her belly. He’s so flabbergasted that Lupin thinks he’s drunk at half nine in the morning because he can’t form a complete sentence for a full ten minutes.</p><p>He watches closely over the next few days, and realises that she probably doesn’t know yet. <em>Kingsley </em>definitely doesn’t know.</p><p>The thing - baby? foetus? - is so small, absolutely tiny, and if he hadn’t been looking so closely, he’s sure he wouldn’t have even noticed.</p><p>But he did, and now he’s not sure what the courtesy is when one knows someone is pregnant before she herself knows it.</p><p>He assumes that he’s meant to keep it to himself and stop her from drinking alcohol until she finds out. And seem surprised when she tells him.</p><p>He’s also <em>absolutely </em>not thinking about the fact that this baby was probably <em>definitely </em>conceived in his spare room.</p><p>Nope.</p><p>Not at all.</p><p>———-</p><p>Remus has a secret.</p><p>And for once, in her life, it’s a good one.</p><p>She’s absolutely terrified out of her mind, though. Scared, that she’ll wake up and everything will be gone, because she’s heard of horror stories about female werewolves and the kinds of creatures they give birth to. Their inability to carry to term, and she wakes with start almost every night now, gruesome gory images in her head, and Kingsley thinks they’re war dreams and she hasn’t told him differently yet, but she needs to.</p><p>She’s stressed though, because she knows how this goes, has seen enough shotgun weddings in the wake of the last war, and that’s not what this is. If Kingsley doesn’t want to be with her she won’t force him, she won’t make a fuss, she can do this by herself if she has to. She just doesn’t <em>want to.</em></p><p>She’s at the pub with Moody, of course, and even though she’s basically moved into his cottage, this is the first time they’ve properly been alone since the battle. He returns with drinks, and she hasn’t said anything, hasn’t even said the words to herself, but he’s bought himself a pint and her an orange juice, and he watches her closely when she takes a sip.</p><p>She’s never really asked, how far his eye can see. She wants to ask now: if he can see through walls, if he can see curses and magic itself, if he can see body heat and bruises and broken bones, can he see the baby growing inside her?</p><p>Some Gryffindor she is.</p><p>She catches his eye, and there’s something warm in his expression.</p><p>‘Something you want to tell me?’ Moody asks eventually.</p><p>‘Can you see it?’ Remus is breathless, and the question comes out cracked.</p><p>Moody’s face softens, and he’s gazing at her so gently.</p><p>‘Aye’ he says, ‘I can.’</p><p>And her heart just jumps, and obviously Moody can see it, because he reaches out and tugs her around the table until she’s sat next to him. He puts his arm around her.</p><p>Remus just crumples, and lets her head rest on his shoulder. Moody takes a deep breath, and rests his head on top of hers.</p><p>‘I can see it,’ he whispers, ‘and you know what?’</p><p>‘What?’</p><p>‘It looks like a baby.’</p><p>‘Yeah?’</p><p>‘Yeah.’</p><p>‘Well, who’d have thought it?’ she breathes, just to hear Moody laugh, and he does.</p><p>————</p><p>Kingsley is over the moon.</p><p>He cries, when Remus tells him, and she wraps her arms around him and lets him press his face into her shoulder. She flips off Moody over Kingsley’s shoulder when she spots him spying in the door frame.</p><p>He only raises his mug in a mocking toast.</p><p>————</p><p>They make Kingsley the Minister for Magic.</p><p>Remus goes to Moody’s in a panic, and she shouts at him until he caves and agrees to come to the ceremony and reception.</p><p>She sits between Moody and Tonks, and ignores the judgemental looks, and she doesn’t know if it’s because she’s a werewolf, or because of the bump sticking out over the top of her jeans.</p><p>Tonks holds her hand, and gives a running commentary on the aurors on duty, and between her, and Moody bitching in her other ear, the ceremony is just about bearable. When Kingsley gives his speech, he is clear, strong and inspiring.</p><p>Remus is so <em>proud.</em></p><p>
  <strong> <em> <span class="Apple-converted-space">————</span> </em> </strong>
</p><p>When Sirius finds out he sends her an array of baby stuff, all blue and pink and a card.</p><p>In it he writes:</p><p>
  <em>I think I’ll always love you, but I don’t think we were a good fit together. I just want you to be happy, and I am so incredibly happy for you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If you’re looking for baby names, Sirius is a pretty good one.</em>
</p><p>Harry sends her a card too, with a small baby blanket that’s embroidered with tiny elephants and is soft to the touch. His card said that he picked it himself, and he hopes she likes it.</p><p>Moody expands his cottage. Remus comes home one day (and when did Moody’s cottage become home she wonders?) to find another door next to his spare room. When she pushes it open, he’s in there pottering in the corner, the walls painted a beautiful yellow and when he steps back there’s -</p><p>A crib.</p><p>Remus wonders if she can blame hormones for the way she bursts into tears. It’s not helped by Moody’s smug smile, the one he gets when he’s done something particularly nice and he’s proud of himself for it.</p><p>Remus takes the nursery as the endorsement it is, and packs up most of her stuff from Kingsley’s flat, and moves it in.</p><p>They’ll figure out the rest later.</p><p>
  <em>————</em>
</p><p>It’s raining.</p><p>It’s been raining all night, and Remus is exhausted and sore and so <em>happy.</em></p><p>Kingsley is dozing in the armchair in the corner, arms crossed, head resting on his shoulder. Remus is propped up in bed, and Moody sits at the other end, both his eyes focused on the baby in his arms.</p><p>She watches, and his grizzled scarred face is gentle, as he strokes his finger along the baby’s cheek.</p><p>Her baby. <em>Her son.</em></p><p>Moody raises his face and catches her eye.</p><p>Between them is over a decade. <em>Fifteen years. </em>Fifteen years of monthly drinks, fifteen years of bitching and snarking, of drunken calls at three in the morning. More tears than Remus cares to admit; Moody’s stupid colleagues and the awkward heart to hearts they’re liable to have when tipsy on sloe gin and beer. Between them is Remus’ thirtieth birthday and the necklace he’d given her, there’s trust and friendship and Remus once thought that her life was over seventeen years ago, but she’d been wrong.</p><p>There’s no way to say this, not really, and Remus has just had a baby and her brain hasn’t returned yet so she can barely string any words together. </p><p>‘Atta girl Remus.’ Moody says, ‘Atta girl.’</p><p>And you know what?</p><p>That’s enough.</p><p>That’s more than enough.</p><p>Moody passes the baby back, and she settles him against her chest. He nuzzles in, and she strokes his head gently. The baby watches her, his eyes wide and curious.</p><p>‘Shall I call him Alastor?’ She mutters only half joking, and Moody barks out a laugh that makes Kingsley jump awake.</p><p>‘Fuck no, don’t do that.’</p><p>————</p><p>END.</p><p>————</p>
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